Arrival

We got home yesterday afternoon, and then I lazed about (/wiped my hard drive and reinstalled my operating system because one of the changes I'd made left it extremely sluggish) for the evening. I'm almost halfway through Winter's Heart. Weirdly, all I want to do is go clothes shopping, which probably just means that I'm stressed out and desire retail therapy (not exactly news).

My freshman advising folder came out. It included what seminar I'm taking (Conversations You Can't Have on Campus--should be awesome) as well as my AP scores (no news there). It also had a downloadable copy of my college application that was meant for my advisor. I, of course, downloaded and read over it. It's funny to look back at it now. I'm not sure I'd do much differently, though I'd probably have written about energy studies instead of electrical engineering as far as what interests me goes, but, as you can see from the fact that I got in, it didn't really matter.

It did remind me, though (well, that coupled with all the college-app-related status messages among my senior friends) that there are a lot of people working on college apps right now, poor things. I should probably do what I did with the RSI app and generate something resembling advice, though maybe not--there's certainly a lot more existing college app advice out there than there is RSI app advice. Plus I'm lazy. I suppose we shall see.

But now--time for breakfast!

Homecoming in August

I'm back, finally.

I'm working frantically, as usual. Missing flashdrive, non-backed up due to lack of internet access.

FML.

Although that seems wrong to say, since it's my own damn fault that the thing is gone. And, as evidenced by the previous post, worse things have happened.

Regardless, after a long break, I'm here again. I have 16 more RSI posts planned, because I don't want to forget all of the little funny things that happened while I was there, so I'm sorry that my regular posts are going to be somewhat brief for the time being.

Here I am, working again, hoping to manage to squeeze out enough free time in the next week to go visit Rube (who hasn't called or texted or anything in 24 hours and oh, wait, he texted yesterday afternoon, just kidding. Too bad I spaced on responding).

And now, time for breakfast.

The funny thing about staying the same size is that nothing ever goes away

I stumble to the closet feeling as if I should be putting my pajamas back on rather than getting dressed. I smash my hand against the wall until I found the light switch and, squinting, I survey the overflowing buckets of clothing I started using a few years ago in order to keep my closet neat and tidy.

I take off what I’d slept in, a baggy tee from a middle school choir trip that had been worn to bed so many times that the conditioner from my hair had left a large white patch about the neckline. I don’t dwell on where the shirt had come from, don’t bother to send my mind back to getting whiplash on a rollercoaster and drinking myself sick with soda. It is far to early for reminiscing.

I reach into the drawer I keep my bras in, a drawer that is so full of underwear, underwire, and swimsuits that it no longer closes. I dig through it, searching for the practical skin-tone I bought last week. I skip past a bright blue bra, the first one I went to a store and bought, that, miraculously, still fits, despite its somewhat wretched appearance. I run a finger along its limp strap and considere walking into the store with my mother, blushing over the half-naked mannequins and trying to reason out why nearly every item in the store was emblazoned with the word “pink.”

I find the bra I’ve been looking for and put in on. I reach up for the t-shirt bin. I fumble through the softened cotton of the pink v-neck that I'd bought specifically to match the long lavender skirt I spent all of sixth grade dreaming of, the fuzzed print on the shirt that my sister and I both have, that we would wear together while bumping hips and laughing, and the thicker, double-printed fabric of the pink shirt I bought before freshman year, the shirt I was wearing on the day that I lay out on the grass in the sunlight, seeing words and hearing music, and noticed that, surprisingly, I was actually happy.

Happiness is nice, but, after handling the bra, I don’t want pink. I switch to the next bin. I reach past the stiff, ribbed fabric of the long sleeved white shirt I had on when I was sent home from school for being a danger to myself and others, a shirt that I defiantly wore regularly for two years before the memory had receded so far that the defiance was no longer needed, and I saw the shirt was so ugly I didn’t want to wear it in the first place. I discover, then, the thin yet fluffy fabric of the shirt I wore the first day of my freshman year, a shirt that my mother bought me for my thirteenth birthday simply because I said I liked it, a shirt that, every time I look in the mirror while wearing it, I still see my fourteen-year-old self reflected in the mirror in my grandparent’s bathroom, wearing the swirling blue shirt, trying to determine why it was that my grandfather, when looking at me, seemed only able to see that I was everything his favorite was not, with all of the intelligence that could get me to the places my grandfather dreamed of for him, but that he would never be able to reach. I resign myself to his ignorance and take the shirt out.

I reach up for a short black skirt that always brings me back to my first day of sophomore year, sitting in Music Theory, the backs of my thighs frozen against the too-cold seat, wishing that I’d had the foresight to wear pants, or leggings, or anything that could have kept the creeping cold from stretching all the way to my bones.

I remember this and open up a second drawer, this one with two pairs of tights. The first pair is flamingly red and so thin that I avoid touching them for fear of creating runs and destroying a gift from my grandmother. The second pair is gray; I got this pair for Christmas last year, and fell so madly in love that I spent the rest of my holiday vacation running about the house in them. Holding them, I can feel myself sinking back into the comfortable chair in front of the fire, watching the flames as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer danced from the radio.

I sniff both pairs, testing for cleanliness. The grays have the same scent of laundry detergent the rest of my wardrobe does. Then I bring the reds to my face, and I am suddenly back in my grandmother’s house, standing in her closet, trying on the crazy old clothes, all my size, and dancing before the mirror. Then I am younger, every inch covered by her scarves, scarves that smell of the same closet and home and woman that the tights do, and I am twirling with my sisters to the music produced by a spinning record, and my grandmother is laughing and moving and twice my size, with her eyes whole and her hair long and her heart open to my own.

I slide my left foot into the tights and began to roll them up before I realize that, if I wear them and wash them and sweat in them and fill them with memories of my own, they will no longer be my grandmother’s tights. I remove my foot, roll the tights up, and return them to the back of the drawer.

I put on the gray tights, the short black skirt, and the tee-shirt that I loved freshman year. I put on the crumbling black sweatshirt that still bears the snags of adventure camp, that is still the only item I own that lets me feel fully protected from the little tiny pinpricks of mosquito legs that I still feel crawling beneath my skin in every dawn and dusk and wood. I slip into my piano flats, a pair that I wore for each performance of Beauty and the Beast, that I wore for every recital until I discovered that I could, in fact, pedal while wearing heels.

I pull the tights out one more time, inhaling the overwhelming sense of home, before leaving the closet behind.

Good morning, bloggites

I apologize for three postless days. I have been, unfortunately a bit under the weather. Well, that's kind of a lie- I'm not sick, just so stressed out about my research paper and tests and everything else that writing at all seems like just another drain on my energy. However, now that I'm at it again, I'm beginning to remember that it is, after all, rather fun.

Thursday was a very long time ago, and I can remember nothing that occurred then. I suppose it can't have been all that interesting, but it really is unfortunate just how wonky my memory is. I suppose it's the stress. Oh, wait, it's beginning to come back to me. I spent about an hour on the phone with Caroline helping her with the Utexas for physics. Shelby came over and started yelling at me to help with the dishes, and I went "No! Physics tutoring! Go away!" and, miraculously, she did.

Friday I saw The Princess and the Frog, which is now my favorite movie of all time. I couldn't stop smiling while I watched it. I even smiled while I was crying during a sad bit, but not the sad bit that you're supposed to cry at, so god knows what's up with that. The animations were gorgeous. I love that all of the surroundings look like gorgeous paintings, but the characters are still their classic hand drawn selves. I love the way the handful of little lines on their faces can do so much. The music was wonderful, to top it all off. Another bonus- prince Naveen is very hot. Animated characters have a remarkable tendency to make one swoon.

After going back to Nyx's house, I stayed out past driving curfew playing scrabble with Tybalt and Kathrya (and Nyx, who won, of course). My saving grace with my parents (who got home about ten minutes before I did and promptly flipped out, cause Shelby hadn't left out a note saying where I was) was that I stayed past eleven listening to Kiwi as she told us about how all of those kids our age who are partying and drinking all the time will drop out of college and become bums who hang out at bars in town and show up in the paper's police blotter.

I look forward to it immensely.

School Spirit

This week is spirit week. On Monday I wore my pajamas. On Tuesday I wore a cowboy hat. It wasn't until after school today when I found out a few people were going to homecoming that I realized that there is a dance and a sport game associated with the weird clothes and pep rally.

Plumbing

The plumbing in my bathroom, my sister's bathrooms, the living room powder room and basement is out. Although my Dad has not yet determined why, we still aren't allowed to so much as wash our faces in this half of the house.

When I was taking a shower this afternoon, the toilet, which I hadn't even used, started bubbling. Yes, that's right, bubbling. It sounded exactly like the bubbling noise I managed to produce using a small stack of notecards held between the pointer finger and thumb of my right hand last week. It totally freaked me out, and I actually stopped mid-shower and stared at the toilet for a while (it bubbled a couple more times, then stopped). After I was all dried off, I went and told Dad. He attacked the toilet first with a plunger, then with some odd contraption known as a 'snake.'

At first, we thought my cousin had flushed a tampon, which, due to our old, decrepit pipes, always stops everything up. However, I got her phone number from Shelby's cell, and Mom called, and she said that she doesn't even use tampons, so that was out. The new theory is that my other cousin, who is mentally disabled, flushed half a role of toilet paper at once. Regardless, I'm going to go walk across the whole house and brush my teeth now. Then, when I wake up at 4 am after a weird dream, which I inevitably will (last night, my cousin's girlfriend got the schnazziest engagement ring), I'll have to traipse over to the offices just to pee.

Oh, what fun.

Homework

I am back in my home, sweet home, and I am oh so very happy.

It's nice to be able to take a shower with water pressure that is just right, and to use my own computer, and play my own guitar. Just like Nyx asked me to, I tried to call her as soon as I got home. However, something horrific happened to her phone line (a tree hit it, or something) so I ended up just walking down there, only to discover that she wasn't actually home. It was rather disappointing.

In other news, I managed to get lost at the train station. It was the same one that Mario and I had to wait in for an hour that one time when we missed our train. When I tried to leave the station to find my Dad, I ended up on one street on the wrong side of the station. When I saw that his car wasn't there, I went down two more escalators to a different street. When we wasn't there either, I went back inside, through the tunnel underneath the tracks, and then lugged my rolling suitcase up two flights of stairs before finding the third and final street, where my father was waiting.

It was fun.