You know, today was fantastic.

"'cause she's walking on sunshine"

Why I am so Happy:

• Today was excellent.
• F.O.H. meeting went smoothly. I'm excited.
• We seem to be having an Indian Summer, this is excellent.
• I have no "free time"a.k.a I haven't been bored for a long time.
• Tomorrow is "Hump Day!"
• Today at work Shelley said "We're all going to heaven for working here." And despite the fact that I'm not really sure what she ment by that, it made me happy.
• There were many hot girls at the library tonight, well, three. Which is a lot.
• Two amazing e-mails from two of my favorite girls.
• Tomorrow I will wear my new favorite outfit.
• I will be busy.
• I organized my binder afterschool today with douotangs and such, so now, even though I haven't done my math homework, I know where it is.
• I am full of creative ideas. I am so excited about all my projects. I'm totally in my element.
• I intensly love 4% of the people I am surrounded by, I passionately hate 1% and the other 95% I don't notice, and I don't mind. There is no grey area, so I love you.
• While walking home tonight I was having a conversation in my head about how excited I am and then Brenna started talking and I started laughing really hard because I was so into my own conversation and didn't even notice it.
• I love who I am, and I don't care about much else.
• I am happy. I am very very very happy.

Today my science teacher essentially said I will die in the next sixty years of either, AIDS, cancer or a flu similar to SARS which will have similar effects as the Black plague in Europe.

That seems to make everything seem to trivial.

Sigh.

Twenty nine people on the front of house crew. Madness. I am prepared for a flying circus, but realy I hope some of them just don't show up. I am excited though, and nervous, but this is good. It's good.

It took me two hours to get home this evening. The bus didn't come for a long time, and then it didn't come a second time, and my father showed up, so I walked home with him. We stopped at a music store, I played some drums. They are $300(cheap!) and I wish I had the space.

I cleaned all evening, because the house was taking on the appearence of a crack house again, and now it's ten and I still have math homework to do.

Today I was wittness to the crime that is Shannon. At lunch she taped newspaper to the ceiling to muffle the horrid radio show. Then proceded to attempt to snort the wax she scraped from the floor as if it were cocaine. I need some party monster. Lately everything is cocaine addictions and drug charges and techno music.

But I look pretty.

Seriously though, I feel like throwing up, just for the sake of it, I don't feel sick or anything. I feel like ripping heads of dasies and picking off all the petals in a random romanceless fashion. I want to share as little of myself as possible and go to bed as early as possible.

I did some volunteering this evening, stuffing gift bags for the Western Canadian Music awards. I love menial tasks, assembly line style. I can get totally lost inside myself. I miss my days of copy room production.

No body ever says how PMS is feeling disgustingly messy, violently destructive, and passionately silent all at once.

Maybe that's just me.

And again with pink.

Ani, stencil, acrylic on canvas board.

Everything looks better through the view finder of my Polaroid.

Friday's make me happy. I have projects to keep me busy, and fall is beautiful. I had vietnamese food for dinner.

I finished A Home at the End of the World about thirty seconds ago. Excellent book. The only book in recent memory to hold my attention to the end.

I am having warmed potatoes in mushroom soup sauce for dinner. Apparently I'm also having a scrambled egg. Work nights are interesting and it's much later than I thought it was.

Some things are really awesome. For example, I have free reign of an entire bulletin board in my school. I get to pick a quote or several, then display it. Awesome hey?

Also, I am going to be a Personal Assistant for one of the people running the Wester Canadian Music Awards next weekend. It helps that this woman is the embodiment of happy calm contentedness. It will be a blast.

Now it's nearly ten and I am going to bed.

"I'd never ment to get this far in such an unfastened condition."

-A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham

I felt better today, about school, and the world in general. I'm excited about Drama Society. I'm excited about all my little projects. I'm excited about my social unit final tomorrow. I'm excited about my appointment with guidance. I am excited about having a locker, which makes me feel as if I have one tiny two by six foot space to call my own. I am excited about music. I am very happy with where everything is sitting in regards to art.

Ta-Dah!

I am afraid that I will wake up every morning realizing that I've made a horrible mistake. I am afraid that if I try to change something that I will be a yo-yo forever without ever feeling a sense of permanence.

I am afraid I say things just so I'll have said something.

I'm thinking I could get used to the life of the rich and famous. My father is running a conference for his company at the Sheridan hotel yesterday today and tomorrow. He ended up staying in one of the rooms during the convention and it's rediculously snazzy.

Mom and I hung around there yesterday helping him organize for the conference, mooching the free food and running things to and fro. After school today mom and I went down again and met him for "coffee" which seems to be the universal term for "Lets meet here, then, and have this."

There's nothing like the threat of unit tests and overdue sketchbooks to motivate me to clean the house. Wires must have been crossed somewhere.

School as a whole was better today. I still do not have a locker and have not paid my fees, but I now know how to go about getting those things done. My social studies class is facinating. I'm going to like it. We are studying economics and I can't believe how interesting and simple my teacher makes it sound.

The rest of my classes, except Art and going along smoothly. Tomorrow I have the Probability unit test in math, I have attended four math classes thus far. We shall see about that. Also it has been heard that there is to be a heart dissection tomorrow. Again, we shall see.

I'm off to work on stuff I should be doing while prying myself away from a book and basking in the glory of my clean room and Broken Social Scene.

***

Also, The Calgary International Film Festival is coming up the same weekend as the Western Canadian Music Awards and my best friends birthday. My Grandmother is turning 81 soon. Halloween is on a Sunday.

Metric lyrics and photos from the garden.

Every ten year-old enemy soldier thinks falling bombs are shooting stars sometimes.

Tonight your ghost will ask my ghost, Where is the love?

Passage ways to windows
That don't close

What's holding up her face? Nothing but blue skies.

Leslie Feist's version of Inside and Out by the Beegees makes me want to write a screenplay and then make the movie of it just so I can use that song as the token love song. It's probably the happiest love song ever.

"I'm the girl who loves
you inside and out
backwards and forwards
with my heart hanging out"

Woah, I just realized that I completely missed the Douglass Coupland reading thing on September 10th.

Thursday evening or Friday morning depending on your take, I had my first asthma attck of the school year. Last night I went to the hospital and waited two hours to be seen before I finally went home, without being seen. When I woke up this morning I felt much better and the asthma seems to be gone almost entirely. Hurrah!

So anyway, I'm just laying low.

I spent a lovely late-afternoon with a wonderful girl who always makes things seem positive. She's awesome, and everytime we get together good things happen. So obviously despite the drowning sniffly scratching throat business I had to go see her.

This afternoon when I got out of the shower I could see my heart beating underneith my skin and solarplexis and it amazed me.

I stayed home today. No one woke me up for school, and I'm having difficulty formulating proper senances. I just don't understand how people function when they are sick. I shut right down.

Because my room is fifteen different types of messy I've decided that I should clean it. Also, I should make some mixed cd's for people, and oh yes I should probably try to stay on top of all the work I've just caught up on.

Sometimes people say things that make you go "whoa, they love me!" and it just makes your day so much better, right?

I have a cold. It's terrible. School today was better than the last few days have been. I can' get over the feeling that I'll be squished at any minute in the hallways, or stampeded during a fire drill. There are so many people.

I still don't have a locker, homeroom, or fee sheets.

My mother, the ruler of herbal cold fighting made me oregano tea when I came home, and this afternoon she went out scouting the latest in herbal cold remedies for the upcoming cold/flu season. I asked her to get this awesome African stuff that we had last spring, but of course she didn't. She got some strange pills. So far they haven't done anything, but here's hoping.

Let the record stand; after two days of school, I have got a cold.

After bursting into tears at the dinner table for the fifth consecutive week night in a row, my parents both sat down with me. We yelled at each other for a while. I continued bawling. We somehow managed to figure out why I am so emotionally screwed up, in regards to teachers, classes and school in general. We figured out why I didn't like Alternative, and also that it was a massive mistake to leave.

My parents both agree that a formal school environment is definately not the place for me. My parents both feel that I have extremely valid reasons for not wanting to be at school.

It has also been agreed that I need to talk to a professional about everything. First we need to find a "professional" who will talk to me, and second we need to get an appointment.

I don't know what to do about school. It doesn't appear that a lot can be done. It's a horrid mess, but I have stopped trying to take charge of it myself because so far that has got me no where and I just get frustrated.

So things are a mess, just felt like giving an update.

"Our classroom doors are bullet proof and lock from the inside and don't have windows, incase someone wants to kill us."

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

That doesn't mean anything to me. I just need to say it sometimes to keep up appearences. Things haven't been good lately. I have indeed made several hasty decisions based on my emotions rather than what is the logical choice and so now I have to deal with that.

I think it is evident that I need some serious therapy.

I have the attention span of a gnat. I feel like I've screwed up so completely that I'll never be able to work it all out. Nothing feels right, and nothing feels completely wrong. I am trying to resist the urge to curl up in a ball and cry. I don't think I'm succeeding though.

This evening I will drag myself to either a drum circle or to the Celtic club because I need some serious musical therapy.

Okay, so I've been waiting a bit to write any of this out.

I've dropped out of highschool, until Monday. I am no longer going to Alternative, because it was not a good place for me to be. I only wish I had figured out that before I invested so much in it.

That being said. I feel stupid, and non-committal, and generally very crappy. I don't feel like I'm doing the right thing no matter what I do. I want to be out of limbo and back into the familiarity and hell that is highschool.

And because grade 12 is not the time to be messing about with my education, I've made the choice to return to my former highschool and resume as per usual.

[I really feel stupid though, "I'm back!" I never thought this would be happening, and I never thought Alternative would be like it was, example: This one kid started a debate about abortion in one of my four art classes on Thursday and so the entire room started yelling at each other.]

i am emo. i'm as emo as emo gets. i'm the epitome of emo.

I wrote this during one of my two journalizm classes last wednesday. I've been waiting to post it while I decided how to sort out this latest mess.

Confessions of a Dazed Apprentice


I’ve been here for the lesser part of two school days now. I have Joni Mitchell lyrics running through my head, not because it’s what I am listening too, but rather because it seems ironically appropriate.

“…Don’t it always seem to go/That you don't know what you’ve got/‘Til it's gone…”

I’m realizing the good qualities that my former high school had, familiarity being the number one comfort right now. It would have been wonderful to meet up with old friends after a summer apart. It would have been nice to choose from several different teachers who teach one subject, or have a minimum of two different time slots to take that class in. It would have been easier to know what to expect, and how to fix things should a problem arise.

After the my second class on the second day here at Alternative I’ve realized two things, first, there are no
bells, and apparently no end to the classes, no dismissals, and everything seems to happen at it’s own pace. The second thing I’ve realized is that everyone seems to be hauling around these yellow sheets. What are those for? I have the distinct feeling that I should be doing something with it, but I’m not sure what.

During the mid morning break I can’t help but feel like I’m in a completely different culture. There’s no swarm of students pushing me in the direction that I’m supposed to move in. There only seems to be general milling about. And now while sitting in my journalism tutorial, which only has four kids, I’m still feeling as if I’ve made a terrible mistake. I kind of miss the dictatorship qualities of my former high school.

After tours, interviews, and extensive time spent researching I find myself entering my last year of high school, still wondering if I’ve really done the right thing. I’ve spent many hours looking for something that could get me out of the disorganization and dictatorship qualities of traditional schools. There’s a lot out there, a different school, an independent study program, home schooling, Chinook college. There seems to be a learning style offered for every type of student.

I chose Alternative, and after touring, participating in the interview, and finally I was admitted, I felt as if I had accomplished something. I figured I’d never look back. I’m looking back. I have a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I simply keep making the wrong choices and I keep falling further and further down the rabbit hole.

I don't really know what to report. So far, it's all good. It's crazy, chaotic, and being that it's grade 12 I am freaking out slightly about my classes.

I have not yet cried, and I probably won't. I've been sneezing all day though.

I miss the english hall, and some people, but otherwise it's all good.

I am a neurotic mess. I decided to e-mail a few people I haven't talked too in a while and tell them that I love them. If you know me personally, or have been somehow communicating with you for over 5 months, there's a good chance that I love you too. I'm like that. I love nearly everyone I know in the platonic sense of the word. I like that about me.

Back to being neurotic though. It's really really hard to write a normal sounding letter via e-mail and try to sound normal. Isn't it. I mean, you either sound businessy or gangstery.

I am nervous, and I cry on the first day of school. I've cried on the first day of school every year since I begain with the exception of second grade where I didn't cry the first day but cried nearly everyother day. I don't want to cry tomorrow.

I want to write essays. I love essays. I am given a topic just like everyone else in the class and then I get to write about it in my own words, and usually I don't know what I'm saying until I write it, and usually I learn something. I hope I can still do that.

Also, thank-you Arianna for being the only person who bothers to answer any of my questions. I decided against the postcard notes in the mailboxes and opted for the e-mail. While not quite as cool, and very unreliable, it was much simpler.

As I seem to be very bad at relaying information in short consise little bits of words:

Today I drove, myself, in the van, around and around and around the block. Through the alley, around and around and around. My mother is an excellent backseat driver, which makes her excellent for the whole teaching experience. She does have the tendancy to grab the steering wheel unnessacarily, and to shreik at odd times, but yes, it was good.

I bought Feist- Let It Die today and it is amazing!

Tomorrow is a school day, so I'm going to go to bed now.

this is probably the wrong combination of foods:

Toasted Blueberry bagel with becel,
Soy Cream Cheese,
"Pesto Turkey sandwhich meat.

While shounding good, and tasting okay, it's a little weird to be eating cheese, turkey and blueberry at the same time.

I am ready to go back to school now. I am ready for everything that is about to happen. I am ready for Friday afternoon to mean freedom and Saturdays to mean sleeping in, and sundays to mean not doing anything at all.

I'm excited about a regular routine. About being around people. Getting up before noon and geting things done.

I only regret not being able to see some amazing people that I know, and I hope that I will see them soon.

I made a jello salad today, and if it had been home economics I would have failed miserably, because I let the jello gel too long and then when I added the fruit it get all lumpy and it looked terrible, but it tasted good.

I have had my learners for four days now, and I've yet to get behind the wheel.

I am afraid that I am getting more and more neurotic the more and more I'm left to my own devices. I still live in my head more than anything. I talk to myself, all the time, and I make up entire alternative, "what if" lives for myself. And, seeing that I can no longer trust my own perceptions of social courteous, is it, or is it not okay to
A) Show up at a friends house unannounced to drop something off, or to say hi because you are in the area, or to pick something up.
B) To leave hand delivered postcards in the mailboxes of 1)People you know and have 1) not talked to in a while. 2) Never really knew that well to being with.

Also, is it weird to e-mail people you never talk to anymore but used to talk to all the time and wish them each individually a good upcoming year, and while you're at it is it okay to vaguely remember someone's e-mail address from when they told it to you over a year ago and send them an e-mail saying, "hey we should talk more often shouldn't we." among other comments referring to ones neurotic behavior at your last meeting, and ones commonly horrific hermit like conduct?

My family left me alone today, while they went off to frolic in streams and catch fish with their bare hands. I have walked around the block 5 times now, and I am trying to make jello, but I don't know how long it takes to be gelled enough to add the fruit, and also, can marshmallows be added too?

I'm eating a chocolate chip cookie that tastes vaiguely of my memory of cheese. I am listening to Tori Amos and I spent most of the afternoon alseep on the couch. It feels like winter, because nothing says winter like Tori Amos, cookies and sleeping at weird times.

Today we saw Pelicans, and we looked at upright freezers, and I read Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris sitting inbetween the stacked washer and drier set and the wirl-pool firge.

My purse is full of junk, and my grandmother looks very tired.

I am watching the Wedge at 1:30 in the morning, because A)I am in love with the guy who's interviewing everyone... and B) They are going to play Lola Stars and Stripes in a minute.

This is ridiculous.

Right now, as I type I'm chewing on the best snack I've made in a while.

Okay, so I really love the following, soy ice cream, marshmallows, peanut butter and chocolate chips. So I combined them. To make Heavenly Hash Ice Cream! Dude this is the best. Cold marshmallows are way better than regular marshmallows.

My father said, when I walked in the door after work, "Great you can drive us to the music store tomorrow!" Sheesh.

So now I'm a legal student driver in the province in which I was born.

I'm hungry.