I get attached to things easily. Like people. Kids. Plants. Animals. Cats. Trees. Babies. The people driving behind me. It's an interesting concept, you know, but through the proximity of my rear-view mirror I get fairly attached to the people driving behind me during my twenty-minute commute to school. I'm privy to their most private habits they display when they think no one is watching---the way the teenage delivery boy obsessively picks at his teeth, the way the mom headbangs once she's dropped her kids off at school, the animated cellphone conversations that go on behind me that I can only make up imaginary dialog for. But I know it's a two way conversation; and sometimes I’m startled to look up and find myself staring into a pair of dark eyes from the rearview mirror of the car ahead of me. It’s disconcerting. Once I was stuck behind a garbage truck on the way to work and was on a road I couldn’t pass on. I happened to be dressed like a pirate and fiddled nervously with my pirate beads as the garbage men hung on to the back of the truck and stared at me for fifteen minutes---me, or my headscarf; I suppose it could be either. And sometimes when I’m flying over the speed bumps on the way; I turn in the school parking lot; I’m distraught to realize that that person behind me happened to be Little Johnny Kindergartner’s mom. You can’t be too careful here. It’s a dangerous world.

Both yesterday and today have been very odd days. Yesterday the pain in my stomach got to be a severe pain and I had to go to the doctor’s and subsequently to the hospital to get a CAT scan. The whole thing was just so surreal that maybe I haven’t even processed it yet—dim white halls, creepy Russian doctors, a three hour wait and then results in five minutes (thankfully, no tumors or anything); and then home and watching The Birds for about three hours. Doctors offices and hospitals aren’t generally known to be the best places for dignity and—well, no, just leave it at that. They aren’t. And now all my dreams are going to be filled with white hospital corridors filled with the thrush of wings and blackbirds. 

I’m off to make Portuguese Donuts.

I've been looking for that holy dress for several months. Okay, I've been looking for it since Emily and Jonathan were engaged; possibly before that but I won't quite admit to that. This dress had to be black. Knee-Length. Formal. Gorgeous. Perfect.

I coveted a JCrew dress but only in a longing sense, knowing full well I could never bring myself to spend that much money on a dress. I wanted a JCrew Dress......

....and God gave me a Vera Wang.

Or, in the guise of God, Reagan Tidd did; saying she was post-baby and would never wear it again. It's beautiful. Lush. Fits perfectly. Black. Perfect.  And...it's Vera Wang. And...it was free.

I'm not complaining.

I don't like getting up early. I do like driving in the cool or the morning, sixties sunglasses and gershwin playing melodiously as I cross the lake. I get a locker. I get a locker. I have wanted a locker all my life and now I get one. Geometry--English---Spanish---Theatre...homeschooling was definitely harder than this. I wish I had harder classes. At least some honors or AP's. Oh well. Dude, that kid looks like Zack Efron...and that's not necessarily a good thing. Nice junior girls. All three of them. All eleven juniors total. Geometry, she doesn't expect me to do that quiz on my first day, right? English. I can do this, I can talk about subliminal themes in My Antonia as long as you want. This isn't a romance novel, says Jordan, why isn't it a romance novel? That's a misconception about romance, Brice and I say together; unfufilled love is every bit a love story as much as fufilled love story. I think most people's most virulent romances are in their minds, I say, they are their fantasies about that girl next door. Buzzers. Why is everyone getting up? Is that what buzzers mean? Oh right---you poor homeschooled child. Excuse me Sir Professor Sir, but using more than one adjective isn't a sin. In fact, I've always been brough up to believe that it's an anti-sin, a kind of indulgence in God's box of Redeeming the English Language. Not that I believe in indulgences, sir, I'm very orthodox and I do realize that Martin Luther changed some things. Spanish; can I really call her Miss McClure with a straight face? I can, it turns out, but I can't remember the past tense of conocer. Lunch. Now I know why people can be self-conscious about their lunches; now when I look at this splattered mess of sphagetti in questionable tupperware, now when this gorgeous girl across from me eats a patch of skin off the top of her chicken and drinks half a frappuchino, smiles, and throws the rest away. Holy Cow (an obvious pun, look at her legs. holy what--lizard? holy sphinx cat?) is that all you eat, how do retain that much cheerleader peppiness eating 9.2 calories a day? This school is small. So miniskirts are allowed, but you're not allowed to have more than one shirt button unbuttoned? Must be cause I'm homeschooled that I can't undertstand that. Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow. How can we really be expected to perform a play with only one guy, when the rest are two doors down blowing things up in science? I suppose I could tape on a mustache. Why do I run cross-country, when I'm very, VERY obviously not the best and I like being the best and I get pains in my knees and ears? And let's be honest: when I'm the slowest by a lot? Oh, but that's right---I do it because of the pure joy of the sweat and the grime.  

And then, I'm not going to be graduating with all my friends. That makes me want to cry. Or wait--am I? Please? Will they be my friends by then?

I need to go to bed and try to catch up on two weeks worth of angles and congruent lines underneath turbulent purple covers. Goodnight.

I thought I was in shape.

Cross-Country practice started up this week. The first day of practice only Calvin, Stephen and I ran; and I attributed the fact that they lapped me to them being, well, teenage boys. But then the second day of practice Larissa and Katie came and they lapped Sarah B. and I. And then Sarah and I just had to keep sitting---

"Oh man. Let's just walk now."

"Yeah. Good idea."

"Maybe we should just sit down for a second in the grass, under the tree in the shade....just for a second."

"Yeah. Just for a second."

And this goes on for awhile till we're walking and see Coach Hardin walking toward us....and we sprint off towards the fence. And then he gave us an ultamatium, and then we knew that 102 degree heat is not an excuse and we have got to kick our butts into shape or we will die next week. But yesterday Sarah Bellaire came over at the crack of dawn (okay, not quite, but almost) and we ran a little over three miles...and then she came over tonight and we ran another little over three miler.

I'm not...but nine more weeks at eighteen miles/week should do the trick...I hope.

driving home from work today, this, in a broken down form, is what I thought about:

1)      the way the crows rise from this certain Davidson field; a crowding black mass that rises above the white cows; stomach high in gold-tipped wheat grass…and how very Van Gogh.

2)      The way Emily looked in her wedding dress when she came upstairs to show us it the other night....the fact that my big sister was IN a wedding dress. The dress is stunning; masses of cream and embriodery with a train of pearls down the back...she is/going to look lovely. She tried it on because she thought the Palumbo’s wouldn’t be here for another half hour, and just as she turned around they all walked in; and there we are; giving ecstatic hugs amidst cream plush.

3)      How relieved I am that tomorrow is the last day of camp; and then sad again. I’m going to miss my Y babies.

4)      That Cross-Country practice starts Monday, and that I am unbelievably out of shape for it.

5)      James 1:26-27, which I’d never really read before; the cut and dry of the gospel:

“If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”