The Dustpan Race

I always find crazy stuff when I'm visiting home. This past weekend, I came across the following, a story I wrote in 7th grade English that I'm sure at the time seemed clever, but now reads as ridiculous. I should also note that nothing like this ever happened; whenever there were signs of mice in the house, my mom always kept it on the down-low, and would catch them before Heidi and I ever saw them. This story is purely a work of fiction. Here is the story in its entirety, maintaining all grammatical errors, etc.

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The Dustpan Race

Picture this: my little sister, playing with her dolls, all innocent like. Today's episode is about Ken marrying a beanie baby and Barbie and Theresa trying out plans to try to sabotage the wedding.

Just when Barbie was getting ready to start, my sister screamed "EEEEEEEEEKKKK! A M-M-M-M-MOUSE!"

In the blink of an eye, she was standing on a chair, holding a dustpan, and of course,the mouse stopped dead in his tracks.

Now my sister was trying to figure out where exactly Mom put the cheese and traps, but decided that it was useless, and decided to smush its furry little butt herself.

She jumped off the chair, called it a VERY bad name, and started chasing it around the house like crazy. They weaved in and out of furniture, jumped and ran under and over tables, all while whacking at it from side to side. They kept this on for about ten minutes, until finally she chased him out the door.

Do you think that is dramatic or what? Well, the other side of the story is even more dramatic than you think.

Mr. Mouse got up early that morning, wanting to go to the "grocery" store for some more Limburger cheese (he was always running out). It was his weekly morning stroll, always around seven o'clock, and today happened to be Wednesday. He ate some cheddar on rye, brushed his teeth, stretched his paws, and started on the trip.

He sort of jumped at a screeching noise from somewhere up above, He was then frozen to the spot where he was.

'WHOW!What's that?Cheese? No. OH MY GAWSH! A CAT! No, wait, it has no tail. Hey, I know what she is. She is a human. Okay, now an escape route. Under the chair? No. East? Yes! I believe that that is the way to go!'

He then ran as fast as his little feet could carry him and cringed at what she called him, and hoped and prayed that she wouldn't kill him.

He was chased around for ten minutes, and finally ran out the door. She then went back inside. Mouse waited for awhile until after dark, and stealthily crept inside. He got to hismousehole again.

"From now on," he thought, "I'm taking walks at night."

New Year

I haven't posted anything in awhile. Mostly it's due to a very busy few months, with starting a new job and trying to pull graduate school application materials together in time for their deadlines. I haven't even finished reading anything since reading The Giver back in October.

But it's also due to a lot of other stuff.

The only thing worse than the quarter-life crisis is depression on top of the quarter-life crisis--and hell, it might even be the same thing. My grandfather passed away the day I started my current job, and since then, I've been in a bit of a funk. Much of November was spent in grief and the stress from trying to get the hang of everything at work. By the beginning of December, I was finally getting things for grad school applications in order when a mild-health issue arose, which led to one of the longest weeks of my life.

On Christmas Eve and Christmas day, I was incredibly weepy. I thought a lot about holidays passed, feeling horrible that I wasn't with my grandmother and my aunt for the holiday and trying to be thankful that I was working full-time, a grand change from the unemployment of two months before.

Then came crunch time for applications and various apartment issues, which lead into the part of depression that included all the wrong kinds of self-peptalks:

How can you think you'd actually thrive in graduate school? Let's be real. You did, what, one day of Nanowrimo, and look how you've screwed yourself over. You're always on Tumblr or Facebook, wasting time. You will quit. You'll go into debt. You're a fool for thinking this is where you're meant to be. All you'll ever be is right where you are now: a fucking failure working a job paying minimum wage. You want to get out? Get real. You're too afraid to go anywhere. You're wasting your time.

And look at everyone else. They're settling down, with good jobs and families ever growing. When was the last time anyone looked at you? Everyone is always telling you to be confident, and you've failed at that just like everything else. You can't even properly change yourself. The one boyfriend you've had didn't even kiss you in the year and a half you were together. You want to know why that is? Because you're disgusting and you act weird. He told you you were too perfect. The ones you fancy will always be looking the other direction. You're a fake. Give it up, because you'll always be stuck. Alone. Remember: single forever. That was your superlative in the yearbook. You were so effing naive. 

Needless to say, I've been feeling incredibly inadequate as of late; too many complicated emotions with too much stress from too many directions. It's gotten to a point where I can't even remember how I was so wide-eyed and eager back after graduation. I feel lost.

I spent a couple days with Brandi, Leah, and Cassie last week when we went to see Lady Gaga again, and for four days I felt really positive about everything. I'd just finished turning in the applications, I was out of the Little Apple for a couple days, and the thrill of seeing Gaga live is always such a beautiful boost in happiness and positivity. Upon my return, however, the feelings came rushing back. I worried that I bored the other girls, that I said stupid things that made them hate me, that I annoyed them. On top of it, I realized a few weeks ago that the last time I'd seen my grandmother and my aunt was back at my grandfather's funeral.

At the moment, it doesn't feel as heavy as before, which I hope is a good sign. I even did a little writing this week--not a lot, but it's a start. I stopped by the library earlier today to pick out a couple books to read, and I'm trying to look forward toward the Sigma Tau Delta convention. I am a writer, and I'm trying desperately to make myself believe it again, because I'm worried that I've forgotten it.

But my birthday is on Monday, and I fear it's going to destroy me like it did last year (aside from the drag show we went to, which was a wonderful pick-me-up). Valentine's Day is coming up, too, and my attitude toward the holiday has changed dramatically in the last few years; I cried myself to sleep in the last two years because everything was too much. I'm trying not to let things overwhelm me.

Things will eventually look up. I know they will. But right now, at this moment, I just feel so unsure. It's like I don't know what I want anymore, though I know I do.

It comes down to trusting in the right words, but all I can find are the wrong ones.

Baby Pink Platforms

A few days ago, my mother asked me--or rather, reminded me--to go through dresses and artwork for a garage sale our church back home is doing later this fall. It was something she'd mentioned to me before, but I hadn't done so the last time I was home and the deadline for having things ready was coming up fast. Another very brief trip home was in order.

I started going through artwork in the basement after I arrived earlier this afternoon, and that was...interesting. Some of it was stuff I'd forgotten I'd done, and the majority of the work was pretty weak from what I remembered. I joked to Mom that one of the pieces I'd chosen was from my "Blue Period," except that the drawing was horrible, and it happened to have been done during a really bad time in high school. At least Picasso's Blue Period produced beautiful, thoughtful work; I went through a period where I didn't care about what I was doing, and it is clear by looking at each and every piece.

The dress search was its own trip. I found one dress that I couldn't bear to part with; it is a deep mulberry color, one my mother made for me for my senior Winter Formal, that has a beautiful cut-out at the base of the skirt and lace stretching across the neckline. I told her I'd take it later, once I have room in my closet to keep it. I found the dress I wore to my high school graduation; it was never very comfortable and it poofed out strangely in front. The ball gown I'd worn to my senior prom, I finally decided, would be donated to the garage sale along with the graduation dress, a skirt I wore once or twice, and a couple of dance costumes.

When I was poking around my bedroom, I found a ton of things that brought back memory after memory. But then I found the platforms.

I'd gotten them at Wal-Mart when I was in junior high. They're baby pink--my favorite color at the time--and I wore them maybe once or twice. In fact, I don't even remember really wearing them--just admiring them, considering whether to wear them or not. Like, perhaps people would think I was trendy if I wore them.

The strangest thing about it all was the fact I'd found them the same weekend I repurchased the second Britney Spears' album, one that I have a love/hate relationship with. I listened to it again in its entirety yesterday, and it brought back memories of a group of friends I spent a lot of my time with in junior high, making up dances to each of the songs and listening to it for hours on end. Two of these friendships were especially toxic; one girl continuously brought me down, reminding me at every chance she could how much better she was at everything, and the other was close to the same, but she lived in my neighborhood and so we saw each other a lot until she decided to ignore me. And then, I entered high school and decided to spend more time in my room reading than socializing.  

One of the girls wore shoes much like this on a regular basis. It was her style, and I wanted to wear the same kind of stuff she did. I bought them hoping that she would approve, and that others at school would consider me trendy enough to spend time with. But I never really wore them.

This kind of nostalgia is something I'm not sure how to handle. At times it's great, because I can tap into the emotions easily when writing. I remember the good things about being that age, about wanting to wear makeup and nailpolish and getting prettied up, feeling as beautiful as Britney or Beyonce or the girls from B*Witched. I've talked a little bit about this before. I was reminded of it again earlier this week when I put in Hocus Pocus and my roommate and I were reminiscing about how different it was watching it as much later. There was something really exciting about growing up at the turn of the century. Listening to that music, watching those movies I loved as a kid--they all bring back the good things. Before the internet was something I depended on, when Disney Channel showed good movies and began airing shows that would stick with me for years to come. Every once and awhile, that mental journey is wonderful. I remember where I was, and how far I've come. 

Other times, however, it's somewhat depressing. At thirteen, I wasn't able to see how those friendships would break down my self-esteem, nor how I would think back on that experience often, understanding what it meant in my life. It puts me in a weird headspace, much like that when I read an old journal. 

But it keeps me thinking, wondering, discovering and rediscovering. I sang along to the album as I've listened to it this weekend, remember the things I love about it, as well as the things I don't. I even tried the baby pink platforms on, just to see how well they fit. And they did. I felt like a Spice Girl as soon as I buckled them. Baby Spice. She's the one who wore the platform shoes most often. 

I walked into the kitchen to show Mom. "Well, what do you think? How do I look?" I asked, striking a pose. 

Mom turned, glancing down at my feet. "Oh, yeah. Clunky."

I laughed, glancing down as well. My mulberry nail polish clashed with the pink in a strange way. "You're right. I gotta take these off."

In Which There Is an Excerpt from a Novel I Will Never Finish

Last night while I was searching for some character notes, I came across the notebooks containing the very poorly-written novel attempt from when I was in high school. I never finished it, but I felt I had it planned out for sequels and other nonsense. The original partial draft is really bad, poorly written, kind of insensitive, and all sorts of crap. I didn't touch it much past my first creative writing class I took as a sophomore in college, mostly because I began to realize how horrible it was, and by then had grown up a little and had developed much different writing goals than what I had then.

I haven't looked at it in years. And believe me, flipping through it again was much more embarassing than I thought it would be, and I felt very, VERY thankful that I've grown as a writer since then. (Thank goodness for all of my fabulous writing classes and professors.)

I did find a second draft of a scene that wasn't the same degree of awful as the original draft, and so I thought I'd share it below. It was written about six years ago, probably around when I graduated high school or early freshman year of college. Don't say I didn't warn you.


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Melinda's basement was large and carpeted in a pretty cranberry shade. The main room, the first you entered when you came down the staircase, was a TV room, complete with two squashy sofas, an armchair, and coffee table. A closet was located beside a doorway leading to two other rooms, Melinda's bedroom and a laundry room.

Melinda led us down the staircase and many of the others went directly for seats on the couches as if they'd done this kind of thing all the time.

Only Kevin, Jessica, mark, and I were left to fend for ourselves for seating.

"Let's have our own party over here," Jessica said, motioning to an open wall area next to the food table, and we sat down as Melinda cleared her throat loudly to get everyone's attention.

"Okay, so before anything begins, a couple of rules. No drinking at this party. It won't be good to have a hangover the second week of school." She paused, while Cody, Kenzi, and Don laughed. "Next, we have to watch the noise level. Mom's organizing her office on the second floor, and she doesn't want to hear us. So, have fun, but not so much that she hears it clearly. Third, this is a movie party, so don't spoil the ending for those who haven't seen it! Also, the theme is 'Double the Fun,' so there will be two movies, two kinds of every kind of food, and--" she gave Kevin an odd look--"we will be playing Fourteen Minutes in Heaven."

"OH MY GOSH," Kevin said. "You're serious?" He fell over on his side in shock when she nodded.

"Names will be drawn for those who are single, and couples will have their own turn as well." Melinda pulled two containers each filled with with folded up pieces of paper out from under the food table. She stuck a hand in one of them, and pulled a slip out. "First up is Dani and Brad."

Danielle squealed loudly as she jumped up from one of the sofas, grabbed her boyfriend's hand, and shimmied into the closet. The door shut behind them with a click of final doom.

"Can we start the movie?" Laura asked, walking up to the DVD unit.

"Yeah," Melinda said, going to help.

"You guys," Kevin said, still on his side. "We get fourteen minutes. At a time."

"Calm down, Romeo," Jessica told him, as he sat up slowly. "If you fuss over it too much, you might not get your Juliet."

"Are you okay with this game, Jess?" Mark asked her, rocking on his knees.

Jessica made a face not unlike when you eat something sour. "Better than spin the bottle any day. Still, there's the element of the unknown along with it...What if I get a weirdo, like Don?"

"I heard that," Don called, his eyes glued to the movie that was now playing on the TV.

Jessica rolled her eyes.

Kevin leaned in. "There's a way to solve that issue, you know."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "What's the answer?"

"Settle down, find a nice steady boyfriend. Then you know he's not weird. AND he wants to kiss you because he loves you for you, and is not just a perverted bag of testosterone."

"Don't talk to me, Kevin, you're making my brain hurt with your crazy outlook on life."

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Yep. I need to burn it. *sigh*

Journaling Through Time

My sophomore English teacher required us to journal at the beginning of nearly every class period. He'd write a question in the corner of the marker board, and we'd write for five minutes exactly. The question must be answered, but we were allowed to talk about other things, if we so wished.

When I was home over the weekend, I came across the very Blue Books I'd written in for that semester and a half. Heidi and I took turns reading them before dinner yesterday. 

Me (when she picked up the other off my lap): You do know you are reading my personal, private journal that I wrote in class when I was fifteen? The one that only I (and Mr. Cook) know the contents of? 

Heidi: Yes. 

Heidi (later, jokingly): EW. You are rude: "My sister keeps telling me that she's planning something special for my b-day, but I figure that if she is, she'll probably forget. She does things like that." Well, now I know what you think of me. 

Reading the journals made me embarrassed not only for myself, but for my English teacher, who, I'm sure, had to read many of these hormone-ridden sob-fests over the years. (I'm sorry, Mr. Cook. I wish I'd written something more philosophical and interesting for you to read.) But mostly, I was intrigued, because I learned some important things. 

1. I repeatedly mentioned how I wished everyone would understand that my writing wasn't to gain vengeance on my classmates. (I wonder if I was paranoid.)
2. I tried (and failed) writing HP fanfic at 15. 
3. For the first chunk of journal, I mention the first two HP movies, but never by name. I can bet you fifty bucks that everyone (including my teacher) knew exactly what they were. 
4. There is a lot of this: "...THAT I AM NORMAL!! Well, kind of...maybe. I don't know" and this: "I can be an okay person if people would give me the time of day. Oh, and another reason I enjoy writing is because Heather has no social life, so she spends her time making up fantasy social lives so that she doesn't go insane with boredom." This is some of the most honest bits of the journal; I remember feeling this way every day. 
5. Above everything else, what I valued most in others (and prayed, in turn, others would value in me) was a good heart and good mind as opposed to a pretty face and hot bod. 
6. I talk a LOT about Prisoner of Azkaban movie (which, at the time, was to come out after that school year ended), Daniel Radcliffe, and Return of the King. 
7. The above, I realized, was because I needed a distraction to everything that was happening that year. And that year, truly, was a nightmare. I kept a lot of my feelings to myself. My emotions (and the events that affected them) were not safe in those blue booklets. 
8. As soon as my grandmother passed away that year, the entries spent a lot of time agonizing about how unfair life was. Her passing shattered everything. 
9. I was lonely. It becomes more evident as the journal progresses toward my 16th birthday, the age my parents told me I was allowed to begin dating. In relation to that, I was naive enough to think that there would be people lined up, waiting to date me. I don't think the loneliness was limited to romance, however. I mention my sister and my best friend, but I don't mention any of the other people I knew I hung out with in school. 

Out of curiosity, I pulled out the diary I kept for most of that year, just to compare the two. My real, private diary is a little more honest, but I know I kept things from it, too. The real diary contains better writing (at the beginning, before the entries become distracted with talk about crushes and movie stars). But there are correlations. Small ones, at that, but they're there. 

"God, I was such a drama queen," I declared as soon as I finished reading both booklets. Dad chuckled a little, and five minutes later, Mom let us know that dinner was ready.

A drama queen, yes. And yet the things I want to respond with: You will change your opinion of Buffy, though you technically won't see much more of the show than you have at this point. You will still be afraid of death, though you will fervently admire Emily Dickinson's view on the subject. Wait till you see DH parts 1 and 2 (and you will still love the HP books like there's no tomorrow, appreciating it more and more as you get older, for many reasons). For goodness sake, read Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. And you will certainly meet some beautiful, wonderful human beings who love you, and whom you will love in return; these people will stick themselves to you like glue. 

And so on. There are, of course, a few other things I'd add, but I would probably keep them to myself. Because I have to learn things, and grow. 

Worse Poetry

I never remembered that there was a short-lived literary magazine* at my high school. But, low and behold, when I went upstairs to my room to head to bed late last night, I started poking around a little bit (one of my projects for the summer/fall is doing a massive cleaning up there and getting rid of everything I don't need). On top of a pile of boxes was a booklet stapled together with a blue cover, entitled "Paint Me As I Am." 

I didn't know what it was at first. I thought it was something left over from my sister's years at the jr./sr. high, but when I saw the worn post-it note on the cover with my name on it and my fourth and fifth hour classes from Spring 2003 listed, I became exceptionally curious. 

Some of the entries are anonymous, some chose to keep their names attached to their work. Two of my poems were chosen to be included in the journal. And they're awful. So deliciously awful, in fact, that I wanted to share. 

Ahem. 

A Garden 

A bench

Set in a grove 

Flowers blossoming all around

Lilies 

Roses

Daisies

Chrysanthemums

All under a willow tree 

With low flowing branches

That grab you with love and wonder

Beside the gently babbling brook

Water softly engulfing pebbles 

With every breath it takes

Around the pebbles swim

Tiny fish

Frolicking within the 

Great expanse of what they call home

Birds sing gaily in the trees

Singing the bird song

Telling of a Garden

Nature's Garden

And, of course, the quintessential angsty high school poem, complete with subtle title, no? 

Leave me be

anger 

rage

it's not all good

don't care what you say

so mad

life hates me

shut up and listen for once 

be happy

'cause 

you're one of the lucky ones 

you probably have a life

that's all milk and honey

well you know what

i have no happy life

cause I'm not like you

don't even go there

 nor start your

foolish hypocrisy

cause it's not all good

don't laugh

not funny

don't you see

it's not all good

leave me be

One thing to understand--something that I have to keep reminding myself of--is that these poems were written when I was freshman in high school. Other than that, I'll let them speak for themselves. Happy Wednesday. :)

*If I remember correctly. I don't remember it lasting much longer than one semester because it might have been a class that put it together--but it's been about 9 years and the details have since escaped me. 

Little Known Fact #3

I am extremely self-concious about many things: my writing, my drawings, my "cartoon fingers" (as one of my best friends once affectionately called them), my social skills, etc. The thing I am most self-concious about, however, is my chubbiness and my weight.

When my grandparents (Dad's parents) were still alive and we would make our annual trip up to Michigan, there was one summer in which some local boys would come to the park just across the block from my grandparents' house and harass my sister and I. They yelled, "Chunk-EE, Chunky Soup!" at me. I had never met them before, and we were only ever in Michigan for a week or two each year.

There was at least one girl in my class in Junior High who consistently referred to me as "Heifer". Up until that time, I had been called "fat" or "fatso."

Almost every time I go shopping for clothes, some kind of disaster arises.

When I was in second grade, I really, really wanted to become a gymnast (as the Olympics were being held in Atlanta, GA that year). Mom had found a simple body suit-type thing that resembled a gymnastic unitard for me, and I was so thrilled to have something to practice my "sweet routines" in. I was so excited about this outfit that I put it on and ran down to our-neighbors'-down-the-block's house to show Audrey, the oldest girl of the family and the one I remember wanting to impress the most. She was sitting on the stoop of another neighbor's house with Amy, who was in high school. When I ran up to them, Audrey looked up at me, and burst out laughing.

"What?" I asked shyly, my face falling. "What's so funny?"

She doubled up even more, her blond ringlets framing her face. "Nothing--" she tried catching her breath--"The dog peed." I don't remember how Amy reacted. She seems to fade into the memory.

I think I knew in that moment that Audrey was lying.

When I walked into my boss's office earlier this evening to get a band-aid for my thumb, and stood there talking with her and one of my coworkers, my boss turned to me.

"Heather, you were doing so good on that diet you were on last year. You should get back on it. You were loosing all that weight..."

I clammed up and busied myself with trying to get the finger cot I'd pulled out of the first aid kit over the band-aid and the rest of my thumb.

"Is that a touchy subject?" she asked.

I sighed. "Yeah..."

She may not have meant it the way I took it. I don't know. My reaction, however, was truth: this single interchange and the little discussion that followed it made me want to curl up in a distant corner and cry.

Little Known Fact #2

At one point in fifth grade, my desk was situated right behind my least favorite person in the world--the only person who seemed to be always on my bad side--Jessica. We had never gotten along (seriously, it had lasted since daycare) and after we had rearranged our desks that month, I was not happy that I'd have to deal with her on a daily basis. 

That was about the time that my mother had started teaching me the basics of drawing the human face, and it was something that I was really, really excited about. (Drawing the figure/portraiture is my favorite thing to draw now, and I knew very early on that it was something I was interested in.) It was not anything fancy; the faces I was practicing were straight-on, basic forms, beginning. But I practiced. A lot. 

Jessica turned around in her seat one day and saw me drawing someone else in the class, I forget who. She seemed genuinely interested and asked if I'd draw a portrait of her. I agreed, and gave it to her when I was done. 

The next day, Jessica turned around again, wearing a look that I would recognize and see later, over and over again. She held up a sandwich bag by one corner, dangling it in front of me. 

"I'm sorry, but my dog tore up your drawing," she said. I remember her smirking or trying not to laugh--but that could be something my mind made up later. 

In the bag were the pieces of the now torn-up portrait I drew of her. 

I don't remember what happened immediately after. Sometimes I wonder if my head made this particular memory up, but then I know that it did actually happen. My mind may have exaggerated the memory, but I know in my heart that it did happen. There's always that one voice in the back of my head whenever I draw, the one that says many things. Not perfect, not good enough, are you kidding me? 

I hate being there when someone else is looking at my work. I've hated it since then, and I know I'll hate it for the rest of my life. I don't want to be there to see their reaction. And I don't believe in holding grudges--and I really, really try not to--but the memory of her dangling that baggie in my face, telling me without words that my interests, my passions, meant nothing, knowing how I have internalized it so, is something I am struggling to forget.