I’m getting my hair cut today. I don’t know why I always get hand-wringy about it and spend so much time mentally rehearsing what I’ll ask for: not only does my stylist ALWAYS give me a cut I like, but I ALWAYS get pretty much the same thing. There is no need to post a photo of my haircut, because it is just “the same as the last time I posted a photo of myself with a new haircut.” I get it cut as short as it can be without going above the hairline, and I tuck it behind my ears, and I like for it to have potentially flippy ends. She always asks me questions as we go along, and I always say, “Uhhhhhhh….” and then she says, “Why don’t we….?” and I leap on her suggestion with relief.

The only thing I would change about my stylist is that I wish she were more CHATTY. I like the kind of stylist where I can sit back and say, “Oh!” and “Really!” and “My goodness!” and “Tsk!” as a river of chat (ideally gossipy chat) washes over me. I find it soothing. Otherwise I sit there in the silence feeling like I should make conversation, my mind frantically searching for something—anything!—to talk about. Last time I even resorted to discussing the haircuts of Katie Holmes and Victoria Beckham. But I’m not switching: I’ve had chatty stylists who should have been focusing more of their attention on TEH HAIR, so I’ll keep the awk silence and the consistently good cuts.

I have been thinking of going back to bangs. I can’t believe I’m even considering it, after the ordeal that was growing them out, and after revisiting those old photos of me where the bangs are parted like the Red Sea because of my cowlicks. I guess I’m not REALLY considering it.

********
Pay-it-Forward Updates:

MO Mommy is showing the giftie she got (from me!)

Midwest Mom is showing a giftie she got and starting a new contest.

Scenic Overlook is showing the giftie she got.

That whole drama with Christopher so far all happened before mid-November of 7th grade.

Swistle, age 12

(note poor bangs—double cowlick)
(we ALL had rainbow shirts, right?)
(and we all tucked them in?)

Not even ten days after I drew a large broken heart with “Me” on one half and “Chris” on the other, I write: “I only like Chris as a friend now, and Lori is welcome to him.” So that’s good news, and I’m totally sure I was 100% sincere. *eye roll* Obviously I was a BIG LIAR. But I think I would have been over him if he hadn’t then continued toying with me. A month later:

I’m really confused. I wish Chris would make up his mind. Does he like Lori or me? He still hangs around Lori, but yesterday he and I were talking about winter, and I was mid-sentence when he interrupted. I was saying things like, “I hate cold” and “I hate snow,” and he said, “I love you.” I was shocked. Also today, I wore a very flattering blouse, and Chris told me five times that I looked pretty today, and that it was a beautiful color on me. He’s been hanging around me alot, and I must have blushed about 20 times!!! And that’s just today. I wish he’d write me a note and explain.

Yes, well, we ALL wish for a little note sometimes. And if the “explanation” were accurate, the note would read “He’s a jackass! Kick him to the CURB, honey! P.S. ‘A lot’ is two words.”

Look how he continues to mess with me:

Tonight my youth group went caroling and Chris came along. All of us had to squeeze into the back of a van, and the whole time Chris had his head on my shoulder, and he kept snuggling up to me, and once he looked me in the eye and said, “You’re cute,” very softly. All this time my heart was going bananas because here I was, snuggled up to my favorite boy, and he’s telling me I’m cute. Even thinking about it makes my heart skip beats. But then he had to spoil it by asking me if he should buy Lori a stuffed moose. How can he possibly hurt me like this? I should be mad at him but, darn it all! I’ve fallen in love with him again. I’m filled with a hatred for Lori, my rival.

Well, well, well. And look who’s got things just the way he wants them. And please tell me what is with girls that we then fight between ourselves over the jerk? I mean, clearly he is being really awful here, and I turn my dislike on the OTHER GIRL. Whuh? It’s like the whole “Team Aniston” and “Team Jolie” thing, as if we all thought the two women should duke it out to decide who “wins” Brad Pitt, aka The Real Homewrecker Here.

Nearly two months go by with no comment. In early February, I write: “Today Chris and Lori broke up. I have decided that if he starts liking me, I won’t like him back.” And on the blank facing page, I wrote in big letters: “I LOVE CHRIS,” then a big line underneath it, and then “NOT ANYMORE, I DON’T.”

Then NOTHING! How could I do this to my future self? What happened in the two months between “hatred for my rival” and “broke up”? Did I pursue him? Continue to have a crush on him? And then what’s with this entry in early March:

My mother keeps praying for me and my dad asked me if anything depressing had happened in Florida [where my brother and I had gone by ourselves to visit our grandparents]. This morning I caught a catch of a conversation that sounded like they were talking about me. I think something’s up.

But WAS something? WHO KNOWS? Because my silly 12-year-old self just left it right there! (My theory: I had a raging case of The Twelves, and my parents were wondering WTF.)

In mid-April, I throw myself a crumb:

I haven’t written in a long time so here’s what’s been happening. Chris and I have been friends ever since February 5th. We have been fighting about once a day, and each fight lasts from 5 minutes to a few hours. He’s hugged me 5 times but I think they’re just friendly hugs. Chris is madly jealous of Jenny because she’s my best friend and he’s not. He tells me that I’m HIS best friend even if he’s not mine. *SIGH* P.S. I think I really like Jimmy, a boy who goes to our church. He’s ultra-fantastically cute!!!

I didn’t remember that we fought so much, although I definitely remember fighting. Chris and I were both the type to get red-faced and teary-eyed and “I hate you!!!” when angry, so things never went well. But what did we fight ABOUT? I don’t remember AT ALL. And every DAY?

And what’s with the possessive stuff? Was he kind of a…loon? He didn’t want to date me, but he wanted to be the center of my world. Sure wish we’d had the term “whatevs” back then. I could have said it to him. I could have held up W-fingers for emphasis.

I like Jimmy as much as I liked Christopher. Poor Jenny has to be friends with someone who is constantly falling in and out of love! P.S. Chris and I haven’t had a fight for over a week!!!

Then Lori dumps Chris (evidently the first break-up didn’t take), and I’m afraid I try my hand at haiku:

Lori, although you
Were dazzled by Chris at first
You did the right thing.

See, if she does what I want her to do, that’s The Right Thing. Isn’t that an easy way to look at the world? Ah, 12!

My dad scanned in some photos of me from the ages of my embarrassing diaries, so now I have illustrations. I added the two photos below to the I LOVE DAVID!!!! post and to the I LOVE CHRISTOPHER!!!! post, but since we’re done with those posts I’m also posting the photos here:

Swistle, age 11

(braces)
(turtleneck and vest)
(growing out bangs)
(undereye circles EVEN THEN)

Swistle age 12

(just got braces off that day)
(the orthodontist hadn’t told me he was going to)
(gave up on growing out bangs)
(unfortunately, double cowlick immediately reminded me why I’d been growing them out)

My nice boss at Milk and Cookies gave us two $25 Amazon.com gift certificates to give away, so go on over there if you want a chance to win one.

I just chose lighting fixtures for the dining room. I’d thought that would be FUN, and I’d planned to buy something pretty/interesting. But I needed flush-mount fixtures because the ceiling is slanted and not high enough for danglies, and when I looked at a whole display room full of flush-mount fixtures, these were my choices (I yoinked these images from LightingUniverse.com):

Pardon me for inquiring, but is the buyer for the lighting store a MAN by any chance? Because every single one of these fixtures looks like a BREAST. It’s even more apparent when you’re standing under a ceiling full of them, looking up.

Furthermore, I needed…two.

I ended up with these, except with white thingies instead of metal:

At least they’re SMOOTH.

My brick-and-mortar friend (term credit: Marie) Mairzy is perhaps wondering if I am going to suddenly confess a childhood crush on another old classmate of mine, her husband August. We were in a combined-grade classroom, and August was in the younger grade while I was in the older grade. A grade makes a huge difference at that age, and I don’t remember any of the younger boys even being on our Crush Radar–even though there was such a shortage of boys in the older grade. The grade-younger boys just seemed sooooo much younger.

I will, however, tell a story that involves August, and it is a story of an incident I consider one of the most mortifying situations of my entire childhood. …How’s THAT for a sure-to-disappoint build-up?

My family occasionally went over to August’s house to play games in the evening. (Yeah, NOW the roller rink looks pretty fierce, doesn’t it?) This was a ton of fun, and 99% of the reason is that August’s family is the kind of family that, if you were going to have an arranged marriage, you’d be slipping the matchmaker bribes to marry you into it. They are NICE and FUNNY and SMART (also healthy and attractive with good teeth and hair!), and totally righteous dudes overall without being, you know, all treacly and lame about it.

One evening as we were saying our goodbyes, August’s little sister (who was and is the sort of person you’d describe as Bringing Joy to the World, she is such a cutie/sweetie/sunshine) asked if I could sleep over. My parents had a policy for these situations, and that policy was No Spontaneous Plans: it’s too difficult to arrange these things on the spot, and too hard for parents to say no if they want to. But for some reason they let this offer stand (THANKS), and four adults and four children waited to hear my RSVP.

I am not sure you know this about me, but I am not a “go with the flow” type. And so the thought of changing course like this and spending the night was…startling. My first protest, in fact, was that I didn’t have my THINGS with me, and of course August’s mother said that was no big deal and that they could even rustle up a brand-new toothbrush for me. And then everyone waited again.

But here was my REAL reason, the protest I couldn’t say: “SPEND THE NIGHT??? In the house of a BOY from my CLASS???? Wearing PAJAMAS?????”

I mean! Imagine! BRUSHING MY TEETH down the hall from A BOY! Having him see me in the morning with Sleep Hair!!! PEEING IN THE SAME BATHROOM. It was unimaginable. Or rather: far too imaginable. If I had previously considered the grade-younger boys “SO much younger,” I suddenly felt they were in fact my exact same age.

This is, however, not the kind of reason you can give when four adults and the boy in question are waiting for your reply. And here is another thing I’m not sure you know about me: I don’t think quickly on my feet. Early in my educational career I considered law, but rejected it because a trial lawyer (which was the only kind of lawyer I knew about) needs to think quickly on her feet. Well, and also I was scared of the bar exam. Because I like to fear things way in advance if possible.

And so I needed an excuse, and I needed one fast, and I am a rabbit-in-the-headlights thinker, and so what I said was that I thought I was coming down with a cold. I believe I added a little fake cough for emphasis. This was so patently an Excuse Lie, especially when offered after the objection about not having my Things, it was insulting to all present. Like saying, “I can’t—I need to wash my hair.” I’d just spent the entire evening with them: if I were indeed coming down with a cold, I’d just given them a hostess gift of GERMS. And I’d betrayed no symptoms of said cold, not in several hours of visit. LIE LIE LIE GLARING LIE. I knew instantly, but there was no fixing it: even if I could have gone back in time, I still had no good reason to give in its place.

All the way home, I died. I continued dying when I should have been sleeping. I died over the next several days, and then periodically–TO THIS VERY DAY–I revisit that scene to die some more. (STILL have no good reason.)

First, the pay-it-forward updates, because I think at least one of them is ending today:

Scenic Overlook is starting a new contest.

Honest and Truly! is showing a giftie she got and starting a new contest.

Second, I am having super-fun shopping for Erin‘s prize, and I really do recommend this pay-it-forward thing if you enjoy shopping and want a little morale boost. It is FUN. And it is so pleasant to have something to look for at the store other than toilet paper, shampoo, and cat food. I have to stop myself from doing a new one EVERY WEEK.

And lastly, a confession/edit: I was talking with my mom about the I LOVE CHRISTOPHER!!!! post, and I was telling her about an edit I made to something I quoted, because I felt the original version was too excruciating, and she said I HAD to come clean because these are NO GOOD if they’re edited to save myself embarrassment.

Okay FINE. FINE. What I TOLD you I wrote was: “I think that my love for him is different from my love of David. With David, I was in love with his appearance and not his personality.” There is a snip between those two sentences. What I ACTUALLY wrote was:

I think that my love for him is different from my love of David. My love of David was a wild, crazy, all sex, no feelings love. I was in love with his appearance and not his personality.

OKAY? OKAY? My face is BURNING. “All sex”!! “Wild, crazy”!! What was I TALKING about?? I was ELEVEN! And had had NO PHYSICAL CONTACT WHATSOEVER with any boy! And was still in the “Ewww, kissing” stage! AAAaaaghhh!! The pain of encountering one’s previous self!

Actually, I know exactly what I was talking about. I was quoting the adults who had taught me thoroughly about the differences between Physical Attraction and Actual Feelings, and I thought I was being Very Sophisticated to talk as if I understood the difference and could apply it to my crushes. What I MEANT was that I thought I’d only liked David for his looks, but that I liked Christopher for his INNERMOST BEING. (That contention is UTTER CRAP. David was a sweetheart and a nice boy who was kind to other people; Christopher was a young sociopath, a player learning the game, and not a nice boy at all.)

My mom points out that this is why it’s a bad idea for parents to read their children’s diaries: imagine if she’d read that! Imagine how flipped out she’d have gotten, and over nothing of substance! I was merely trying to prove how much more Real my feelings for my current crush were than for my previous crush (actual difference: NONE), and my mother would have been freaking out that her 11-year-old was having sex and/or interested in sex. Sigh.

I’m just going to keep going through the diaries until I get bored with it. Who knows how long that will be, considering how long I maintained interest in WRITING these awful things. You may want to go do something else for awhile. Like, okay, go make these brownies, but instead of salt, put in a bag of Andes mint baking chips and 1/2 t. peppermint extract, and add a few minutes to the baking time. MMMMMmmmmm.

Swistle age 12
(just got my braces off that very day)
(notice haphazard bangs: DOUBLE COWLICK)

I’m continuing through my journal from age 11-12. Here’s an example of what a little planner I was:

Some things I’d like to do or have or whatever when I’m a teenager are: Have one thing I eat when I’m upset. I read a book about a girl who ate pistatios when she was upset. Maybe I’ll eat saltine crackers. I also think I want one boyfriend (some freckles on him would be nice) who is my best boyfriend, and then I don’t care if that’s all the boyfriends I have or if I have seven more.

I think that was pretty flexible of me, don’t you? Pistachios are expensive but saltines are cheap, and I was okay with ANY number of boyfriends up to and including eight. And I only had physical-attribute suggestions for the FIRST one.

I remember the very book I was referring to there. It was called The Pistachio Prescription, it was by Paula Danzinger, and I see they reprinted it in 2006. I liked the lead character’s name, which was Cassandra.

Let’s skip ahead to a couple of months after I announced my crush on David.

I am hopelessly in love (at least I think I am) with David. I don’t want him to kiss me or anything, but I want him to like me for what I am. I think he might like (or maybe love!!) me already but he’s trying not to show it. He smiles at me a lot and when he’s grumpy and I get mad at him, he always apologizes VERY quickly.

ZO-kay, well obviously this was the early days of Female Delusion Syndrome, in which men who show zero interest are presumed to be hiding that interest. We are talking about an 11-year-old boy here. Considering he was outnumbered by girls and a good half-foot shorter than the shortest of us, I’d say the quick apologizing was a smart tactical maneuver.

Then there is page after page after PAGE of fantasy valentines and fantasy notes—and, most agonizing of all, fantasy SCRIPTS in which I have David confessing his secret love for me and only me, and in which I explain that I had been afraid to tell him I felt the same way until I was sure of his returned feelings. In each script, he brings a flower to the conversation: a daisy, a pink rose, etc. WINCE, GAG.

Okay, and then there is a gap of FOUR MONTHS, followed by this entry:

I think I’m going to crack. David doesn’t love me. David doesn’t even LIKE me. I think I’ll just have to give up on him. Maybe he once had a crush on me, or maybe he’ll love me in the future, but right now he thinks I’m a flirtatios, ugly brat. (Unless he’s just pretending, which I dought.) I’ll probley still love him for awhile though.

Well, gosh! What happened? I don’t remember at all! Notice I still allow for the possibility that he’s just HIDING his true feelings under a FALSE FRONT of dislike. Also: notice my misspelling of “flirtatios” is similar to my misspelling of “pistatios,” above.

Luckily the heart mendeth with time, and within days I’m announcing a new crush, the new boy in school:

This time I think I’ve finally found a boy who loves me back. On the first day of school he said that he liked girls. I really would not be surprised if he kisses girls. I think that my love for him is different from my love of David. With David, I was in love with his appearance and not his personality. With Christopher I really do hurt with him and laugh with him. I think Christopher would make a good husband for me.* If I were to marry David I think I’d live to regret it.

ACK. FLINCH. BLUSH. The asterisk leads to this note at the bottom of the page: “*But I have no intentions of actually marrying him.” Ermmmm-kay, noted.

This is all of two weeks after meeting Christopher, and I could not have been more wrong about his husband potential. Rookie mistake: thinking charm and good looks equal good person. He sure did capture the imagination, though. My old classmates Jen and Heather can back me up on this: was he THE CUTEST, Jen and Heather, or WHAT? I think every girl in fifth, sixth, and seventh grade liked him, and probably even the fourth-grade girls raised an eyebrow in his direction. Tall, blond, blue eyes, VERY FLIRTY in a group of kids where all the other boys were still going, “Huh? What?” Plus, he had a SPORTS INJURY:

Today Christopher broke his arm. He was being so brave about it that I could just cry. I could tell that the pain was agonizing because he was occasionaly making agonized faces, but he didn’t cry like I would have. If he lets us sign his cast, I think I’ll dot my i with a heart.

Excellent plan. A couple of weeks later, a newsflash:

CHRISTOPHER LIKES ME! So, you don’t believe me, do you, Diary? We went through this all before with David, didn’t we, Diary? Well this time I have a note to prove it.

Well, and as it turns out, I DO, and it’s taped to the page. In the note he explains why he asked another girl to couple-skate at the roller rink (SHUT. UP. The roller rink was SWINGING), and his explanation includes the fact that he WANTED to ask me, but was “in a bind” because the other girl’s sister asked him to ask the other girl. The best part of the note, though, is the end.: “P.S. Remember I only like her as a friend. You on the other hand.” ZOMG is that HEADY STUFF or WHAT?? I write:

It’s a strange thing, love is. It’s very strange to be wild about someone, to wish on every star, and pray every night that that person will love you, and then they tell you that they do and BANG! you’re in a confused world that probley every teenager has once visited. That’s how it is with me and Chris. It’s like he’s a stranger; he’s not the same boy I loved before, and yet, I can still see the same qualities. Right now I’m just confused. I’m sure, though, that it will clear up soon.

HA HA HA HA HA! Oh, YES, dear, love just clears RIGHT UP. (Also: BARF, WINCE, FLINCH.)

I’d forgotten how this little relationship between 12-year-olds ended, so as I was reading along I was thinking, “Well? WELL??” And geez, it’s not pretty, so I’ll make it quick: He asked to sit next to me every day at lunch, he gave me his last M&M, he told me “someone” was in love with me. Then he wrote me a note asking how I felt about him, and I risked it and wrote back that I loved him, and he wrote back that he’d been asking because he wanted to know if he’d hurt my feelings if he asked another girl out. He wrote: “So things were going fine and I thought I was falling in love with you, but a couple days ago her friend told me she liked me, which I had figured but I took it as good news. I still like you a lot but not as much as someone else.”

YOWK. Do you know, that still makes me feel gaggy, well over twenty years later? What a nasty set-up that was, huh? I don’t look back on that and think, “Ha ha, funny little puppy love!” I look back on that and think, “That was BRUTAL.”

I totally dug those diaries out of the trash. I’m still getting rid of them, obv. I just…I can’t explain why I wanted MORE PAIN, but I did.

Okay, I have here my VERY FIRST journal entry EVER. It’s, like, blogging 8-tracks. I was 11 years old.

Swistle, age 11

I think my mom bought the journal for me at a yard sale, and I was using one of those pens that has blue AND black AND red AND green at the push of various buttons:

Yesterday Melanie invited me to a sleepover. I went right after school and we had lots of buttery popcorn and soft drink after supper. We started off today with a walk, then we went swimming in their pool. We stayed in from 7:45 in the morning to 3:45 in the afternoon with breaks for lunch. I am very sunburnt, quite sleepy, and very sunsoaked.

So first off you can see that I’ve ALWAYS had a problem with overusing the word “very,” and it must be comforting to see how little people change over twenty-five a few years.

But here’s the problem: the two INTERESTING things that happened at this sleepover, I didn’t write down. The first was that the walk we started out the day with–that healthful walk in the fresh morning air–was a walk out to Melanie’s brother’s p0rrnn stash in the woods. First p0rrnn I had ever seen. I’d considered myself a woman of the world because I’d seen a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog or two, but YIPES. I was so shocked, the one photo we looked at is burned into my brain. (We only looked at one, then walked away fast, pretending to be cool with it.)

And the second interesting thing was that the neighbor girl we swam in the pool all day with was a teenager, and she was the first girl I’d ever seen with underarm hair, and furthermore she must have had a good two to three inches of it. She floated on her back with her hands behind her head, and her underarm hair WINGED OUT to the sides. I was fascinated. Adding up all the peeks, I must have spent two good solid hours staring at her underarms that day.

And do I mention any of this in my secret, private diary? No, I do not. I tell about the POPCORN, for the love of pete. It was BUTTERY, apparently.

Ten days go by before I write my second post entry. I take the opportunity to announce a crush on David. I give two justifications for this crush:

1. He respects and is nice to girls.
2. He’s cute. He has wavy brown hair and freckles.

And looking back on it, David was indeed a wise choice. For one thing, he was THE ONLY BOY IN MY CLASS. So, you know, he BETTER respect and be nice to girls, considering how OUTNUMBERED he is. He really was cute, though. I emphasized this by switching ink colors (I’d been using black) to put a red heart after my reasons.

This journal is the kind with lined pages on one side and blank on the other, so I have drawn a picture of my fish. I have labeled them with their names; evidently their names were Cleo and Martha. I’ve also drawn the little fish net, but I messed it up the first time and tried to be all subtle and cazh about the mess-up (on the first page!! aaaagh!!!) by drawing an arrow to it and labeling it “Doodle.” So my future self would know it was NOT a mess-up but in fact a carefully planned doodle, deliberately drawn next to a successful drawing of a fish net.

I’m cleaning house for an impending mother-in-law visit, and I’m finding I’m a little…scattered. For example, on Tuesday I spent over an hour tidying a bookshelf that is invisible to anyone not sitting at my computer in our back room. Meanwhile, the dining room table in the middle of our kitchen can’t be moved to the exciting new dining room until I remove its cloak of detritus—and yet there it sits, still cloaked.

Yesterday’s urgent cleaning task was a box marked Memory down in the basement storage. CLEARLY that box needs to be sorted out RIGHT NOW; it will make ALL the difference in the overall cleanliness of the house! I’m tossing out my old diaries, the ones from my teenage years. I’ve saved them for two decades on average, and I’m still not interested in reading them. Furthermore, when I DO read a little bit of one, it’s excruciating. Not ha-ha excruciating, just excruciating. I went through and pulled out the photos (my family’s living room in 1986! the boy I had a crush on for four years!), but the rest of this crap is getting pitched.

You may wonder if I am not being a bit hasty here. Perhaps in my crazed-bumblebee cleaning frenzy I am making rash decisions. But no: I’ve been thinking for a few years that it’s time to stop saving the diaries, and I waited this long only because I wanted to avoid being hasty and rash but couldn’t bear the necessary task of going through them first.

I’d thought, back when I was writing these drippy, emotional, overly self-aware tributes to self-absorption, that as an adult I’d want to go back and read admiringly about my younger self, but in fact I would pay CASH MONEY not to have to. It’s not JUST that I was so lame, it’s that I was so very sure of my non-lameness. This is the sort of thing that causes a person to wonder squirmingly how she’ll feel in twenty years about her 30s.

Oh, hey, here’s what I was looking for in a husband at age 15:

1. nice eyes that show inside emotion
2. a very sensitive sense of humor but can be serious
3. never (or at least rarely) late
4. likes to take walks
5. likes to hold hands
6. likes to shop
7. NOT a male chauvinist
8. sends me flowers and balloons and stuff
9. doesn’t like football or baseball
10. generally cheerful
11. good hygiene
12. strong but not too macho

Here’s the timeline of my first romantic relationship:

• August 12 – asked me out
• August 14 – called me long-distance
• August 20 – visited with his parents
• August 27 – took me to see Abyss and for frozen yogurt and a walk with his parents
• September 22 – broke up with me

You know what’s missing between August 27 and September 22? The part where I wrote him a multi-page letter Every! Single! Day! and it was filled to the brim with love love love. Freaking him the SNERHELL out, since we were FIFTEEN YEARS OLD.

One highlight from a college journal: “I am a difficult, irritable, cranky, critical, complainy person. How can I change this?” GOOD LUCK WITH THAT, college girl!

Here is a list:

FRIMPING
VEERING
IRRELEVANCY BUS

It’s all in caps like that. What does it…mean?

Here’s a poem that is better than all my other high school and college poetry by merit of being SHORTER:

so you say
you love me.

well.

Here is my high school prom budget:

$100 prom dress
$10 chewing gum for crash diet
$15 haircut
$40 dyed-to-match shoes
$5 silver ankle bracelet
$4 two pairs of nylons
$4 nail polish

Please note that this was for an IMAGINARY prom: I had a crush on a junior boy I’d never even talked to, and was imagining how much money I’d need if he invited me to his prom. Which he did not do, and that was unsurprising because we’d NEVER MET.

Basic composition of high school journals:

50% boys boys boys boys OMG boys!
25% lame, self-conscious sarcasm
20% song lyrics
5% French

Basic composition of college journals:

40% boys boys boys boys OMG boys!
25% lame, self-conscious sarcasm
25% lame introspection
10% song lyrics

Clearly this is not information to preserve for the ages, and I am speaking from the point of view of someone who has just paged wincingly through hundreds and hundreds of pages of “I LOVE JIMMY!!!! He is SOOOOOO CUTE!!!!” with hearts doodled all around. FLINCH.

I’m remembering how my mom saved her old journals “for her daughter to read one day,” and she finally let me read them when I was in my teens, and I suffered through about half of one journal before handing them back. I really DIDN’T want to read about my mom pining for some boy, and reading MYSELF doing it is if anything EVEN WORSE. For years I regretted my impulsive decision to burn all the diaries of a 2-year high school relationship that ended badly, but now I’m GRATEFUL: those diaries are so much better in my imagination.

I did have a couple of good finds. One is a note from my high school physics teacher on an assignment:

Young Swistle,
You have convinced yourself that you are going to get these exercises wrong no matter how many silly mistakes you have to make. Why do you insist on making life hard for yourself?

I’m saving that. The other good find is lists of my favorite baby names from 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988. I’m going to post those over at the baby names blog.

We all knew Rob would be doomed, DOOMED! FINE in the whole music lesson situation, and indeed he was. He came home from school and I pounced on him, practically grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him as I said, “WELL??? What happened with the music lesson???” and he was all, “Huh? What? Oh, it was fine. Can I have goldfish crackers?”

He remembered the lesson, which was my primary concern: I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten to remind him as he got on the bus, and also I don’t know how I’m going to let him go off to college where he’s going to have to remember to get up, remember to shower, remember to go to class, remember to do his homework……. Well, anyway, let’s save that panic for another day.

He asked a teacher where the classroom was, and when she sent him to the music room rather than the band room (I didn’t know there was a different room, either) he asked another teacher, which I was very glad to hear because he and I share the Panic Gene, which means that we sometimes get so nervous and upset we are no longer able to think of any sensible ideas other than crying. He found the room, and he was the only one who didn’t have an instrument, plus he didn’t have the book, but he said he just explained to the teacher that his clarinet was on its way but hadn’t arrived yet, and she was fine with that—-and see again the part about Panic Gene, because in similar situations he’s been mute because he wasn’t sure it was okay to explain things to the teacher in case it was like he was arguing or talking back. (Me: *empathetic pang*)

Then he went to his classroom, and his teacher had NOT known he had a music lesson but she DID know music lessons started this week—so as he put it, she “believed” him, and also he gave her my note so now she also knows Rob has an anxious mother, and it’s just as well we get that out of the way while the year is young.

So. He handled it just fine and everything was just fine. I was glad he and I had gone over it ahead of time, with me explaining that sometimes _I_ felt panicky and had trouble thinking what to do and so it was good to think things out beforehand and realize that even if things went wrong they’d still be fine overall, because at the time he was vigorously nodding and saying he was the same way, even though afterward he was all cazh about it.

It is time for some photos of the new dining room! I wasn’t very good about making sure I was taking pictures from the same angle, or, like, at the same time of day, and in fact it wouldn’t be out of line if someone gently explained that I should make sure I was taking photos of the SAME ROOM each time—and also, it’s really hard to get a picture that shows much of it. But you’ll get the idea.

This is standing in the kitchen, looking past all the shoved-into-the-kitchen junk (the dining room chairs will soon have a more sensible home, but where ARE we going to put the recycling bins that used to be on the porch??) into the dining room before the walls were painted or the floor was in. The opening there used to be sliding glass doors onto the porch. Do you like our original early-1960s kitchen light fixture? It has mod gold stars on the bulb cover.

This is after I painted the ceiling white and the walls white Behr Sea Salt, but before the floor was in. Look at all the outlets my dad put in for us! That’s only half of them!

This is after the Armstrong fake wood laminate Black Walnut floor went in. Do you love it? I love it. We also installed one (1) baby.