As promised, the story of the grasshopper and it’s effects on my life.

I spent the second week of May in New Mexico, which is an entirely different story. However, before I left, I notified all my teachers, except two — my Russian teacher, who would also be gone most of the same week and wouldn’t care anyways, and my biology teacher. Actually that’s not completely true. I had mentioned to my biology teacher that I would be gone, but on the day I told all my teachers that I would be absent and was there any work I’d be missing? I didn’t have biology and therefore never had an official type conversation with him about it.

Time passes and I returned, having missed a full week of biology. On my return to the class, I found I had missed three assignments, a chapter review, an arthropod drawing and the dissection of a grasshopper. I turned in the review, I drew the arthropod (thought it sure wasn’t pretty) and I contemplated the grasshopper dissection. At that time, I did have the chance to make up the dissection.

I decided, hey, what the heck, I won’t dissect the grasshopper. Doubtless, you’ll want to know the reasoning behind this decision. 1) I don’t care what chemicals they feed them, how big can a grasshopper get? It’s gonna be tiny and I won’t be able to tell what it’s insides are, even if I did care. 2) Somebody told me they squirted. 3) I’ve already dissected a worm, a crayfish and a starfish. How big a dent could a zero for a grasshopper make? 4) It’s a smelly, dead thing. I don’t like smelly, dead things.

So, I made my decision, I was conscious of it, I didn’t change my mind and I felt good and control of my life (if only a small portion of it).

Thursday came and 7th hour. Some guy who I know by name only came in to make up a grasshopper dissection. Sitting on my desk and coloring in my tesselation from math, I watched him out of the corner of my eye. The grasshopper was one ugly sucker, about 2 inches long. The biology teacher told me I could join him, if I wanted. “I don’t like smelly, dead things,” I replied, and continued my coloring.

Another day or two went by. The teacher was working on grades. “Bonnie,” he told me, “if you don’t do that grasshopper you can’t get an A.” Fine with me. My world won’t end with a B in Biology.

More time passed (though not a lot) and it was the end of the school year. I got my project reward slips and took them home. (Project reward is a program at my school where if you haven’t missed more that five days of school, or if you have an A or B grade or haven’t been in trouble you don’t have to take exams in whatever classes your parents will sign you off on.) I remembered to give the slips to my mother. “I’m only going to sign the ones for classes you have As in,” my mother said. Shit, said my brain, argued with itself for a while then directed my mouth to admit to having a B in biology. “Why’s that?” my mother asked, “because it’s biology?” (I have a history of hating, not caring about and generally not doing fantastic in science.) “Umm,” I said, and ended up telling her about the grasshopper.

Now, I may think it’s great when I make decisions and do things for myself but my parents don’t agree. In fact, this time, they disagreed with me quite emphatically.

Someday, my mother informed me, when you have a 3.98 gpa and you’re not the valedictorian, you’ll regret this.

If you want to go to a good school and get scholarships you need to work. (oh yes daddy, I’m such a slacker, of course) The people who get scholarships are the people who work and who don’t give up. (I’ll never let go dad, I’ll never let go…)

And it was decided by the Powers That Be that I was an evil child and would be taking the biology final. The Powers also decreed that for ever grade below an A I would be off the computer for an additional week. Addictional to off till the end of school, but although school ended of Thursday, these weeks will end on Saturdays, the Powers told me.

All arguments against the Powers are ignored. But if I’ll be majoring in English, why would one bio grade matter? What science scholarships would I be applying for anyway? Isn’t it my life? (Not till I’m 21, as I was informed by my male parental unit, several arguments ago. It might have been nicer to have been slapped.)

Two things remain on the tip of my mind. Should you have the right to ruin your own frickin’ life? and It’s a B! What’s so frickin bad about a B?

Oh, fun. Today I’ve recieved a saddish email from my ex. (Background info: it was a virtual relationship and after I hadn’t seen or heard from him for 6 months, I sent him a nice email hoping he was having fun, because it no longer concerned me. A month later he drags in, he’s so very sorry, he feels like shit, can we still be friends? He thinks I’m the most wonderful person in the world, he’ll do anything I want, he’ll email me daily. Two, count ’em, weeks and a couple emails later he’s gone again. Not that I particularly cared.)

hi liss

is there somsehting wrong?
ive came like 5 times and mailed u
and i get no answer, havent seen u either
🙁 im sad

No, spelling is not one if his strong points. He’s way more code based. I’m sure his computer takes lengthy absences much better, mine certainly doesn’t care, but even the cat misses me when I’m gone for a week. So, seeing as my current opinion of this guy is that he should go soak his head in turpentine (or something else extremely flamable) and then go have a smoke, I’m not going to reply to this either. I’m thinking of it as a taste of his own medicine. Another month and I won’t even be around to glare at the computer screen if his name comes up.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep avoiding him, because I know I’ll chew him out in a major, not-so-polite way. I don’t want to do that because while he was around he was a pretty nice guy, and I always acted like a really nice girl to him. It’s better if he feels like shit for bailing out on a really nice girl than if he feels like he’s better of without the bitch I can act like.

I’m waiting after school for my mom to pick me up. Right by the door in the commons — on the wall by the bench I’m sitting on, as a matter of fact — is a big, butcher paper calendar for this month withs student’s birthdays on it. Most of them have comments on them, and a couple things have been added, such as the date of a couple’s two month anniversary. However, it might be when the girl of the couple is two months pregnant, it’s kind hard to tell. It could be both, of course. One pen and handwriting style has written “Levi + Cassie 2 months” and another has added “pregnant.”

Someone else has written “Last Day of School” (on the correct day), with smiley faces in all the “o”s.

I just realized this, one while day is missing — it’s been torn out. It’s today. Today is missing. That can’t be a good sign. But nothing bad has happened and my mom just showed up.

Ack, they had some temp workers at the doctor’s office and I had to wait for over an hour because they forgot to put my chart up. I’ve been there a couple times lately and the nurse recognized me and said hi (though at that point I was falling asleep and it didn’t penetrate my consciousness) but my name never clicked and they decided I’d missed my appointment. Eventually my mom went and asked about the long wait and it wasn’t long after that. Inside the examination room (is that what they’re called? I don’t know) there was a box of little kid toys, including one of those round plastic ones with the pictures of animals around the edges and a big, rotationg plastic arrow. You point the arrow at an animal and pull the string on the side. Then it will say, for instance, “The cow says mooo.” Except all the recordings were really old and sounded, as my mom put it, like they were being run over with the farm tractors. It was fun anyway.

After all the medical papers for my summer camp were filled out (they want to make sure I’m not broken when I get there) we went to the grocery store. That may bot cewr exciting, and it really isn’t. How interesting can remembering which kind of spaghetti sauce you like be? Answer: It can’t be exciting at all, uncless you get shot for buying the wring kind.

Luckily for me, I don’t have to write about spaghetti sauce, because I found something far more interesting in the produce department — a folded piece of paper with a grocery list on it tucked in among the oranges. “Scouring powder; wash cloth for dished; brill pad (soap)” My mother and I wondered how it got there and decided it must have arrived in the hands of an absent minded husband. He’d end up coming home with some oranges, some pringles, maybe a steak for dinner. “How am I supposed to clean the sink?” his wife would shriek. “And I already thawed out chicken for dinner. What happened to the list I gave you?” “I had it when I walked into the store,” he’d mumble. “I got some oranges for the kids…”

Then I went and saw Titanic with my family. I didn’t see it when it was here before. General impressions of the movie: A very romantic movie. I found it kind of hard to think of the characters by the names ‘Jack’ and ‘Rose’ though, because people don’t talk about Jack and Rose, they talk about Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet. Rose/Kate’s fiance sure was a jerk. I think he should have died instead of Jack/Leo, which is probably the majority opinion. At least if Jack/Leo had to die, Kate/Rose should have had his baby. But that’s my opinion and I’m not a screenwriter, or else I’d have a lot more money

I didn’t cry at all, not even when Jack/Leo died. His character was a nice guy, but there were so many people who died there, why cry for him? My mom said I had a heart of ice and I only love my cats. Yeah, well, the cats sleep with me. If Leonardo Di Caprio slept with me, then I’d cry when he died..

Water Essay

What is life, without water?

I think I could never live where there is no water. Oh, I have been to the desert, and it is beautiful, but in a dry, gritty way. Orange dust, and so hot you wear sandals without socks, which only lets the desert rocks try to mine your feet for the liquids they are missing. I could not spend my life there, with the hot sun soaking up any small amounts of water which find their way to such a miserably dry place.

I suppose it might not be all bad. There are thunderstorms every so often — great black clouds, then hard rain beating down on the land. A scattering of hail. But it all disapears quickly into the thirsty dust.

I feel sorry for them, the inhabitants of the deserts. In my lake, I can swim through sunrises and sunsets, bright colors rippling and sliding through the water. It is exhilirating, orange and yellow and purple all around me and in the sky above me.

In the early winter, can the desert residents slip and slide on the ice, or examine lily pads and bubbles trapped within?

How shallow their lives must be, surrounded by rock and cactus and forever blue sky! A sky without clouds becomes boring. You need clouds to rain, clouds to blow by, clouds to find shapes in, clouds to turn brilliant colors when the sun

Or those who live inland, without beaches! I live for the beach. To walk along the shore, searching for the perfect shell, or to sit with bare feet buried in sun-warmed sand, watching belugas which have come right up in the shallows, that is life! I would take a tent and live among the yellow rye grass and pale driftwood, rising each morning to watch the sun rise and light up the bay, except that I would miss my lake.

To walk in the grey rain, to dance through wet grass! To watch dewdrops catch fire as the sun hits them! To see snow-covered fields as bright as day in moonlit, sparkling nights. To leap from icy shape to icy shape, strange layered chunks of ice built up and carved out by patient winter tides. To sit, snug and warm, watching fat snowflakes fall. To scale the rocks beside a waterfall and watch the rainbows in the spray. Without water, could there be snow angels? Could you squish your toes in mud? Could you find delightful sea creatures in tidepools?

Oh, what is life, without water?

Thursday just snuck up on me this time. One minute it was Tuesday and I was thinking I should dye my hair again then, the next thing I know, it’s Thursday.

I hate Thursdays. On Thursdays I don’t have any good classes. Since the school year started Thursdays have been bad. My period has started on Thursday everytime but once this school year. I get cramps, headaches and stuck in 7th hour (‘student activities’ once a week on, surprise, Thursdays) with lesser scrubs and cheerleaders.

By now it’s probably a self-induced psychosis and I’m doing it to myself by expecting it to be bad.

But this Thursday I wasn’t even expecting it. I have not had a bad Thursday for quite a while now. I went to bed last night and even thought I knew that I would wake up during Thursday, it didn’t click. It didn’t start being bad till after second hour, when I realized my period had just started. Then my foot began to hurt, just as the bell rang and it was time to go to 7th hour. I ate breakfast this morning

Well, there’s where the text ended on the paper. I don’t remember what happened, maybe there was an assembly or something. I think that may have been the day I bummed milk off a couple friends. I always used to get a lot of cramps in my feet because I had allergies and didn’t always get enough calcium. I’ve grown out of them now but too much chocolate with nothing else to dilute it makes my feet hurt. And I drink milk to cure it. It seems to work.

Ick. Today it is cold and rainy. And I don’t mean Lower 48 cold and rainy. I’ve experienced that, it’s the time in the summer when you wear a sweater till it clears up and is hot and humid again.

Okay, so it’s 42 degrees F outside. I was hoping it would be about 36 degrees, which would sound really miserable, especially if it was raining. I mean sleeting, which is rain having an identity crisis and thinking it’s snow, or vice versa.

It really is rainging. People will think that’s a Freudian slip (a Freudian slip is when you say one thing and mean your mother 😉 ) and that it’s really sunny and warm and I’m just lying to get sympathy. Well, I am trying to get sympathy and it really is raining. I’m sticking to the facts as I see them.

I really wish I could write as fast as my mind thinks. I was thinking some really interesting stuff. At least, I found it interesting, which is why I thought it. Am I confusing, pointless or what?

The Russian word for rain is ‘dozhd’ (zh pronounced like the s in treasure). In French rain is ‘plieu’ or something like that, I can’t, of course, spell in French.

Anyways! Today dozhd eedyote. (it’s raining) Dozhd sounds like pouring rain, but it only sprinkles in France. If it rains over there (France) then on the news they probably say ‘Today we experienced light showers.’ Except they would say it in French.

I would say it in French too, but all I know in French is ‘Voulez-vous danser avec moi?’ or “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi?’ and I don’t have anyone I would say that too. Especially since I doubt I have the verb in the second sentence spelled right, I might mean something worse now.