hark! how the bells

today christmas was very good. no surprises. i asked for a digital camera, the second season of lost, something that would play my ipod in the car, and a ymca membership, and i got a digital camera, the second season of lost, something that will play my ipod in the car, a ymca membership, and a comforter to go in my duvet cover, plus candy. also, drew gave me harold and kumar and my grandmother came over for christmas for the first time in a lot of years that she has felt well enough to come. she gave me sixty dollars, which means that i can go to the bluff city ball on new years eve if anyone wants to go? i probably wont, but its nice to dream.

i like christmas a bunch.

is anyone having a new years eve party i can go to, or should i just plan one myself?

and im free! like the wind! like im gonna live forever!

yesterday was the last day of school. yesterday was the last day of school! yesterday morning i made Ultimate Sadness because i wanted to listen to hallelujah during exams, and i did. ms wexler never even suspected. on the way to class at 7.29 i saw everyone i know almost late too. i found out that my first love, chesley, goes to white station. he had a rat tail in kindergarten and he liked morgan and i was so jealous! he doesnt look the same. in government i took the exam very fast to get that shit over with, then i read harry potter five, the best one, for a while, then the class watched hercules, then the bell rang and it was over. in the parking lot michael neimeyer and i traded one earphone with each other and listened to huun-huur-tu and eye of the tiger at the same time. it was perfect.

bekka came home with me and we decided to bring back the meat pies for the holiday party, so we spent hours with loud music and frantic baking and piled the pies and some muffins and some gingerbread-man-shaped muffins into a big basket. i stuck my head under the shower and curled my hair and it was brilliant! and we headed off.

the neimeyer house is huge, first off, and i drove the whole way with my skirt caught in the car door. i got narnia chapstick in the white elephant swap, and soon the party moved to the upstairs of the neimeyer garage. everyone was everywhere! and we turned off the lights and everyone was somewhere else. there was breakdancing but no music.

too soon it was eleven and i drove bekka to my house where she was retrieved by her parents. in the car it was raining hard and it was dark and foggy in the windows and on poplar i was afraid. but we made it!

last night i dreamed i was trying to brush my teeth while driving, and i dreamed i was dancing in a line with lena and someone else and i was watching us in the reflection in a window, and i dreamed i was at camp and someone convinced me to climb a mountain. today i woke up to my dad hammering on my window-- he is putting up the christmas lights, which he didnt do last year. today we are going to decorate the tree. we put a blinky-nose rudolph on top every year, instead of a star. we call him rudy.





today i am supposed to maybe see eragon with annebel; we'll see how that goes. tomorrow is festivus. im very excited. christmas is very very close and i havent gotten morgan or eileen or my dad anything yet, but i will.

here is my to-do list for the break:
-get presents for morgan, eileen, dad
-learn my lines
-read wicked
-get the poisonwood bible
-clean my room
-have a lot of fun
-watch the lord of the rings extended versions
-finish artemis fowl two and read the third one
-read ten little indians or something else from my very full books-i-havent-read-yet shelf
-thats it.

you guys!

what if people had HANDS for EYES?

My history exam is over.

my semester average, based on actual mathematics:
[(93 + 95 + 91) * 2 + 86] / 7 = 92

my semester average, based on mr stephensons mathematics:
[(93 + 95 + 91) * 2 + 86] / 7 = 93

what a nice man.


aaron burr could be alan rickmans great great grandrelative.

I've seen your flag on the marble arch

I just downloaded three different versions of Hallelujah and none of them is anywhere near Jeff Buckley's.

when my brother was a toddler he had little red suspenders.

last weekend i found the cedar chest full of my childhood. my green dress that i will give to my first daughter, the shirt from my first play, little hats and socks. this week was so bad, and so so long, everything that happened was bad, except rehearsal for bang bang youre dead. when i got in i was excited but i was expecting to be a little reluctant to get up and go rehearse, but everything is so good. when i think about the show i get the feeling behind my lungs like used to come when i read stories about myself. i look forward to getting up and going to rehearsal tomorrow and im sad we dont have another one after that till january 4th. today on the way home it was me ryan lauren josh and kristen all in laurens tiny car again, and i let ryan find out my secret through inductive reasoning, and he laughed hard, but i told him not to tell. we blocked the first 15 pages today and honestly i am thrilled about getting to use my talent for falling down dead convincingly that i havent been able to use since i was in the pit and the pendulum sometime in the 20th century. nathan ramia is 9th in his class and he is not stuck up. three life points for nathan. lauren fed us cheese and chocolate and diet coke. my favorite flower is a yellow rose because it is yellow and a rose. the window man at high point coffee has a birthmark under his right eye and he is charismatic. today we and hattie discussed how a nickel and a penny is the same as six pennies. hattie and i believe charisma is a very important attribute. last night i did precalculus for eight hours and slept for two hours.

tonight was the first rehearsal

for bang bang youre dead.

uhm. im pretty excited. about the show. and my role. and the cast. and everything. im emily, ryan is josh, hattie is jessie, jenee is katie, josh sigler is matt, nathan ramia is michael.

ALL
Hold the anchovies!

no but really. this is a serious show.

EMILY
Hope I didn't disappoint you in the cafeteria this morning. Hope I died just right for you, Josh.
JOSH
You didn't have to fall on me and get me all bloody.
EMILY
Want to see it again? --Go on. Shoot me again.

i dreamed a dream in time gone byyyyy...

when hope was high and life worrrth livinnnnng.
i dreamed that love would never diiiiiiiie
i dreamed that god would be forrrgivinnnnng.

no really.

last night i dreamed my house was set up like it was when i was five before we had a computer, and i got engaged to spencer on a whim, and i didnt really want to marry him, but i didnt say anything because i was excited about the prospect of engagement, and because it was several years till the wedding and i was hoping he would break it off sometime in the interval. one night i came home and my dad yelled at spencer because i didnt have my jacket on.

and i was playing rizzos understudy in grease at the time and i was terrified because it was understudy night and i didnt know the lines in sandra d and everyone just kept talking to me about the engagement and the stage was a combination of the white station stage and the overton stage and i went to sit behind the curtain to wait for my scene, and there was TONS of talking backstage so lilla (apparently to quell the noise) kept pulling the curtain open and i was so furious with her because she was ruining the show, and she said it was a totally respectable way to make people stop talking backstage, but everytime she did it there were fewer and fewer people in the audience until everyone and all the actors and everyone had left except me, lilla, ms regan, ryan, and newman.

so i freaked out and sat on the steps and i asked ryan if there was some bizarre theatre etiquette that would let lilla do that, and he said no way, but that ms regan was going to let ryan put the show on the next week at the pond at the middle school which was really grahamwood, it was just understood that it was the middle school, even though the pond was frozen and looked like a beach. he said that i could play rizzo because the girl who had the part didnt want to do the show anymore (it wasnt amanda tittle) because of what lilla did, and ryan was going to get brad jackson to play eugene.

i went outside the auditorium and it was this little old western town like in clint eastwood movies but a little less dusty and i was going to buy stationery for the wedding invitations and inside the store was a bunch of potato sacks and a ladder up to the loft, so i climbed up the ladder in this old timey gingham dress and then i woke up.

Ladies and gentlemen,

it is seventeen degrees outside.

The Last Unicorn

When the last eagle flies, over the last crumbling mountain
And the last lion roars, at the last dusty fountain
In the shadow of the forest, though she may be old and worn
They will stare--unbelieving--at the last unicorn

When the first breath of winter, through the flowers is icing
And you look to the north, and a pale moon is rising
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
In the distance hear the laughter, of the last unicorn

Im alive
Im alive

When the last moon is cast, over the last star of morning
And the future has passed, without even a last desperate warning
Then look into the sky, where through the clouds a path is torn
Look and see her, how she sparkles, its the last unicorn

Im alive
Im alive

that good weekend feeling goes away so fast

my homework for the week so far.

APUS test tomorrow, government test tomorrow
german project due wednesday
government project due thursday, latin test thursday
latin project due friday, government article due friday
ten chapters of as i lay dying every night
APUS homework, every night, until i die.

i have never wanted a snow day more in my whole life than i want one right now, and it is going to be mostly sunny for the next week and a half at least. cold, and sunny.

everybody knows

IT SUCKS TO GROW UP

and everybody does

friday - sunday

on friday annebel came home with me and we took a nap because gilmore girls didnt come on. thats about all we did. nothing with friends is very nice after a long week. we had pizza for dinner at like 845.

last night was my daddys sixtieth birthday party. there was a man there who looked just like max medina but older. he could have been maxs much older brother or just barely his dad. it was okay but everyone there was forty years older than me at least, so i invited hattie over. o, it was so nice. whatever has changed in hattie is so good. we spent hours and hours in my room sitting and talking about middle school and cracking up. we looked at every picture on my computer. we watched blood drips on newsies square. we read old fanfictions. i forgot that the party was going on right outside, and she stayed until 1 in the morning. i have missed her even though i see her every day in fifth and sixth. four hours of socialization without any distractions. we did not talk about homework or history or anything about school except how silly our teachers are.

today was/is spencers birthday. i went to bookstar to get as i lay dying, but they didnt have it so i got a new journal and a hot chocolate. then to davis kidd where they had several copies, and i also got 12 songs for spencer. that is one of the best albums i own. among my favorites of all time. i hope you enjoy it spencer. cory branan is my hero. then we went to see happy feet (again for me) and it was so cold even just on the walk from the car to the theatre, but the movie was good. we went to dinner at amerigo and it was pretty good. im very full.

thank god for this weekend. im going to do a little precal (maybe) and read something for latin and thats it. i dont have to write an essay. do you hear me?

i dont have to write an essay.

This almost says what I want it to, but not quite.

Letters About Literature.


Natalie Babbitt:

When I was ten years old, all I did was leave the fourth grade and come into the fifth grade. It’s not a very pivotal change, fourth to fifth grade. In fact, I think it is decidedly less important than most others. Coming into first grade is a huge step, as are starting fourth, sixth, and seventh. In eighth grade you are the oldest kids at the school, and you don’t get that again for a while. As I have learned so far, in high school every year is critical. The change into grades named with words instead of numbers; the change out of being a freshman; the move into the upper classes; and finally, seniority.

Among all the transitions in youth, fourth to fifth grade means next to nothing. Ten years old means next to nothing in the year 2000. Ten years old for me in 2000 is so unimportant, so nonessential, so lifeless, compared to ten years old in 1880. When I was ten years old I was fuming about wearing a uniform to school the next year.

When Winnie Foster was ten years old, she was making the decision between mortality and infinity. She was ten years old and falling in love with a beautiful boy who was ninety-four years her senior. How could Winnie have grasped the concept of so many years? Ninety-four years is probably longer than you or I will live, though we all want to be a hundred. I try to imagine how Winnie feels when she pours the bottle out on the toad, or how the fibers and ligaments in Jesse’s arms and hands strain when he hugs her during the storm, and I know that nothing I have ever felt can give me the experience to empathize with their pain and strength, but I can hear Jesse’s soft voice in Winnie’s ear, and I can feel the slant in the rain and the electricity in the air around them.

I have read about Jesse Tuck and Winnie Foster three times, and I have built my ideas of time and sacrifice on their experiences. I am very young as humans go, and I hope I live to be a hundred, but I know I won’t. I will maybe make eighty and that’s the end. Sixty-four years left.

But I have built my life out of stones, and some of them are huge, some don’t fit, and some are perfect. I have built my life out of rocks, and a few of them are the Tucks. I know they’ll never go because they’re stuck. The Tuck rocks are not just to fill in the spaces between boulders; they are foundations of walls. They are necessary to hold the rest of it up. They are my Atlas, holding up the fragile earth.

Recent studies have theorized that an asteroid that has been hanging around our solar system for a while could hit earth in about thirty-five years. If this huge rock hits our little planet, it could kill everyone, they say. But it couldn’t kill the Tucks. Nothing can. When the world ends, Natalie, when earth breaks apart and the atmosphere dissolves, what will become of Jesse? What will become of Miles, of Tuck and Mae? When the world cracks and fire rains down from the clouds and all the humans die, where will the Tucks be? I see them thrust out into space on an ocean evaporating behind their heels, torn apart like the continents below them, to live forever choking and freezing alone in the vast night, praying for some greater power to take mercy on them and let them die.

In the endless frozen darkness, how do the Tucks go on? Do they spend their days scratching at their icy limbs, tearing at their own eyes and necks in futile attempts at suicide? Or do they swim about in the thick nothingness, searching for each other, hopeful though there is no hope? In a thousand years Mae will force her eyes open and see Miles close enough to touch. In a thousand more years Jesse and Angus will see human-shaped shadows and become frantic and meet each other. When the last thousand has passed, they will be together again. The unbeatable Tucks will have all gone insane millennia ago, but their joy will defrost the tips of their fingers, and so they will brush against each other for months until their knuckles interlock and freeze. The chain of Tucks will wander the universe, minds long gone, for the rest of time. They are rocks. They cannot be broken.

Angus Tuck says you can’t have living without dying.

Whether it can be called living or not, I hope to exist like the Tucks. Hopeful though there is no hope.

Sara Stephens