Filling blank space with words
God of Time, if you’re following TheWebWeavers, could you slow down, for me?
Just two minutes ago, three months of summer stretched out hazy and infinite in front of me. Now, it’s ending, it’s over—the happiest summer of my life.
I’m not ready for college to start.
I’m not ready for summer to end.
How am I supposed to let go of my friends? When it feels like I just found them again and I need to cling on for dear life?
At least there’s Instagram.
Photo by KoolShooters from Pexels
I’ve moved on, I swear I have. Just, it still hurts and I’d like to say this one thing:
On rejection letters
When you unzip your chest and put your soul on display and it’s poured in a beaker like honey and measured and they find it’s not enough, it’s a slap in the face, a slamming of doors. A closing of paths and an erasing of futures.
You’re not good enough.
Maybe it’s a slap well-deserved.
How could you ever think you were good enough?
Maybe it’s a taste, like a dewdrop of pepper juice on your tongue, of the real world. Maybe the encouragement, the belief, the expectation, piled on higher and heavier, were fake and this—this is reality.
I could’ve done more, I could’ve been more, if only I knew I was supposed to. What should have I done? How else should have I molded myself, pressed myself, like the clay I am to your expectation, to the expectation that became mine? (Your expectation that I folded like a love letter and stuck in my chest where it prickeld and prickled until eventually it fused with my heart.)
It was a really competitive application pool this year.
I couldn’t compete.
We had limited space.
There wasn’t space for me.
Greetings, dear nonexistent readers! It’s been a minute. Or several minutes.
School is quite a time-suck. I’m pretty sure I haven’t had time to breathe or sleep in the last *checks watch* nine months. That was quite a roller coaster. Well, now it’s two days into summer, I’ve graduated high school (*terror*), and I’m very bored without school (it’s a love-hate relationship). Hopefully I’ve retained some of my blog-writing ability after so long.
A lot’s happened in the last year that I’ve been missing from the blogosphere.
So yeah, just some general life updates. I’m hoping that I can blog more this summer (but, unfortunately, I’m probably going to drop off the face of the Earth again when college starts).
Midterms are finally, finally over. I am so glad they are gone. I don’t particularly mind taking midterms, but I despise the preparation. It saps time and leaves little room for anything else.
I’ve had a few days off after midterms, thanks to the snow, and I was so confused. It was like “What is this? Free time? I haven’t seen this in so long I’ve forgotten what it looks like. What happens if I poke it? What do I do now? Whaaaa. It’s eating me.”
As much as I beg and plead with the universe for free time, it only scared me when the universe plopped almost three days in my lap. It was so new, so different. I yelped and threw it into the fireplace. Sorry, it was a reflex.
I tried to have fun. I read a lot. I wrote. I drew. Sitting back at my computer to write was an interesting experience. After so long away from my stories, my fingers were like baby birds and they had to relearn their way around the keyboard. I’d forgotten the feel of the keys.
But it’s like I’d been trained to do nothing but homework. I wasn’t prepared to do anything else. And so I ended up studying, despite having no homework. I read ahead in Chemistry and studied for Science Olympiad.
So in conclusion, I am unable to have fun.
School has started again in earnest and I am being pummeled with homework. It’s like standing in a hailstorm of golfball-sized ice bricks, except each golfball/ice brick is a pocket of homework. Eventually, these homework pockets will melt and you will drown, but you won’t even notice because you were so busy attempting to duel the homework pockets. You may win a battle, maybe even numerous battles, but the homework will always win the war. Because you have only yourself: mortal and easily fatigable. Homework, on the other hand, does not fear death and has an infinite army raining from the sky. Defeat is inevitable. It’s only a question of how long you can hold your breath.
So what have I been doing these many, many nightmarish days that I have been absent from the blogosphere? Not much, really. Mostly studying. I’ve been studying nonstop since Christmas. My brain has been mushed thoroughly. You could probably be sneaky and serve my brain instead of mashed potatoes at your next dinner party and no one would even notice until you surprised them at the end of the night with this delightful little piece of trivia. You’d cackle with glee as your guests process your wonderful trick.
Many things have happened since Christmas. I aced my exams. I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped on English, but it didn’t affect my overall grade at all, so *shrugs*. I’m sure I’ll accept it eventually. I did very, very well in AP Chemistry, however. But as I am only me, I will spend my time thinking about the perceived English failure (which wasn’t really even a failure) instead of the unexpected success in Chem.
I’m glad that the sacrifice of my morale was worth it.
We had a Science Olympiad Invitational that our team did very well in. I saw a friend from middle school. I said “hi”. It took her a moment to recognize me. (I had an epiphany. I finally understand what people mean when they say you can read eyes. I probably wouldn’t have recognized her out-of-the-blue either. It’s been years and we both look very different. I only identified her because she wears the same style of sweaters now that she did then.) Then she waved. Then we studiously avoided each other.
I entered a piece to an art contest. Predictably, nothing came of it. But I’m glad I entered, as it motivated me to finish the drawing, which I will give to my grandma for her upcoming birthday.
I also entered two short stories in a writing contest last November. Surprisingly, I got an Honorable Mention for one of them. So YAY.
Greetings, peoples of the blogosphere!
It’s been a rather long while, hasn’t it? But don’t worry about me; I haven’t spontaneously combusted or anything, in case you were wondering. Instead, I’ve been slowly drowning in an expansive ocean of homework, from which I couldn’t reach my laptop in order to ensure you that I was, in fact, alive. I did, however, possess an abundance of paper and various writing utensils, so I attempted to write you a letter notifying you that I remained in existence, as I’d hate to worry you. But you know the unreliability of leaving notes in bottles. *Shrugs*.
But while you need not worry about the state of my aliveness, I’m afraid you must fear for my humanity, as recently I’ve felt as though I’m simply a homework robot.
With the semester ending, school has gotten very intense, and unfortunately, when you never seem to have enough time, it’s the things you enjoy doing that must be cut out. I’m afraid that school will not be getting any mellower with midterms approaching, so expect sporadic, unpredictable, and unanticipatable blogging. (Apologies for using three adjectives in a row that mean the same thing. It usually annoys me, but I couldn’t help but highlight the delightful contradiction of expecting the unexpected. It makes me simply giddy.)
I’m planning to post once a week for a while. Probably until mid-January. Most likely on Mondays.
So, that’s it for this mishmash of a post summarizing the last 27 days without you peeps (A Summary of a Summary: homework.).
In conclusion, abrupt goodbyes.
It was really loopy.
I mean loopy in all ways possible. It’s probably the only word I can use other than the ambiguous “fun”.
My friend, LeRain and I walked around from the gym to the cafeteria for the first hour, talking to her band friends while I regretted my class decisions. (I didn’t take band because I’m trash at ze flute and drawing interested me more.)
It was kind of boring at that point and the only thing that saved it from being that way was the yummy ice cones and this physical Angry Birds game. So the game basically went like this: step on the wooden thing and try desperately to knock down a tower of plastic bricks. Easy, right?
Wrong. It was so hard for me, even with my eight-inch heels (that’s a story for another post) to get the bird to hit the building. I knocked down the tower once in the twentyish tries I had. At times like this, I question why angry birds don’t have wings.
After that, I met up with my other friend, Ash. She was dancing with her friend, Zip and introduced her to me. We danced a bit in the gym then went to the cafeteria since we were a bit tired. This was when the loopiness began.
Since the Gatorade was an odd grey color, we joked around that it was laced with illegal substances. We laughed so much that Ash spilled some of her drink on her dress. A guy passed by and said that it looked like a private part of the human body and snickered.
In an attempt to cover it up I gave her my Spanish crossword (which was due the next day) and tucked it under her dress so it looked like a bib. We walked out of the lunchroom then, Ash looking magnificent.
Outside the cafeteria, I saw a girl who had THE SAME EXACT dress as me and I just started laughing so much because of all the odd events that were somehow circulating around me. The girl probably thought I laced my own Gatorade with illegal substances because that’s what I sounded like at the time. I managed to say “Nice dress,” before promptly making my exit from her glaring radius.
Later, Ash, Zip, LeRain and I all went to the gym and played a game similar to Mad Libs. We danced more afterward, joining a dancing circle of freshmen doing stupid dances. Once in the middle, Ash danced like a goddess, but then was suddenly bombarded by two girls doing a sickening butt-slapping dance. Luckily, all was back to normal when this person went in the middle and started to do the chicken dance with incredible finesse. I think now I fully understand why people call highschoolers “weird”.
Lastly, LeRain and I did a slow dance to “A Thousand Years” since we were both third wheels to a couple. The song was a nice end to the rather loopy event.
This week has been a long series of mishaps and general clumsiness. But after I got over the sheer mortification, it’s actually kinda funny.
So. STORY TIME.
I was doing my homework this weekend, and a comb was on my desk. Now, this was a rather hefty comb. And I got very annoyed at this comb for being on my desk. (I know, I know. The comb’s only fault was existing. It didn’t deserve its fate.) So, I did the only rational thing and decided to get it out of my sight and into the closet. But… I decided to throw it into the closet instead of calmly walking it to the closet. Cuz, yeah. Maybe I was a bit frustrated. And true, I wasn’t frustrated at the comb. I was angry at my homework, but I couldn’t very well rip up my homework. So I threw the comb at the closet. And I’m not particularly athletic, and I don’t have particularly good aim nor descent hand-eye coordination. So, I completely missed the pile of clothes at the bottom of my closet and instead hit the wall. And I kinda sorta made a dent.
BUT.
At least it’s not a hole.
And a few days before that, I was in band class, sitting between the people who sit to my left and right. We will call them Leftie and Rightie for simplicity. So I turned my stand and knocked Leftie’s flute OFF OF HER STAND.
Leftie, unlike me, has very good reflexes and lovely hand-eye coordination, so she somehow, like a SUPERHERO, managed to catch her flute MIDAIR, while I was shouting “ohmygodI’msosorry.”
BUT.
Five minutes later…
I knocked my stand over and Leftie AGAIN manages to catch it in midair.
AND.
Half an hour later…
I knocked my flute into Rightie’s stand and dented it. (The flute, not the stand. Which is unfortunate because I’d rather the stand was the dented one.)
In Chemistry, we’ve been doing a lab. Lovely, lovely, lovely lab.
Yesterday we didn’t finish the first trial and today we didn’t finish the second. But that’s not the point.
After heating a crucible, we set said very hot crucible down right next to the rubber tube that feeds the gas into the bunsen burner. And then the rubber melted.
LOVELY.
The end.
So. School’s started, and I’m doing homework almost every waking minute.
My schedule:
So. The blog’s been a bit neglected, unfortunately. I’m hoping that I figure out the secret key to doing homework faster (Do any of you guys know?). In the meantime, my plan is to schedule posts ahead on the weekends (but to do that, I’d need a weekend that’s not packed).
So I was telling a story to Arachnid about this moment… and I didn’t really finish it.
I’m going to ramble about awkwardness and hands and terribly scarring moments in my life. Be warned. Parental advisory is advised.
We were talking away under the trees as people started to litter into the building.
That’s when Fishy grasped my hand.
It was wildfire, but as the awkwardness dumped onto me, it was a bucket of freezing water. I could feel eyes peering at us like we were scum. Lightheaded with embarrassment I tried to look at Fishy, to register her emotion, but I couldn’t get past the tall obstacle of her shoulders towering over my vision.
And we were walking.
“Hey,” I asked, adding to the rather one-sided conversation I was rambling on about (how her hands were like a heater) “I’m cold.”
She put her arm around me. I relaxed due to the warmness of her hands but then realized the large lump of additional awkwardness in my throat.
“Actually…” I mumbled, “Let’s link arms.”
“Sure.”
I felt like an uneven staircase. Her elbow didn’t exactly bend where mine did due to severe height differences.
“Uh…” I started.
It didn’t take another word. She let go, then grabbed my hand, her fingers slowly interlocking.
I held back the urge to scream. The level of PDA between us at that moment changed from a slowly increasing linear graph to a rapidly growing exponential one.
Third grade, like all other grades, is a horrible year. The pressure begins to ramp up, you’re homework gets due dates, drama, etc.
I did lots of stupid things in third grade, such as color my teeth blue with a ballpoint pen; color my entire hand blue with a ballpoint pen; lock myself in my room for hours at a time without food, water, or bathroom breaks to watch ICarly; contract the stomach flu; throw up in the hallway and walk into a random classroom with vomit all over my hands and face; throw up in the hallway again; write a short story about vampires; etc. The list could go on for ages.
But today we’re going to talk about a particular story that took place in third grade.
Like every other mostly sane person, I am in an ongoing war with mosquitos. Mosquitos are horrible (they’re important to the ecosystem but horrible to people). They are horrible and don’t you dare disagree. They suck your blood like greedy vampires and leave itching bumps that swell to the size of plastic Easter eggs.
Mosquitos, on the other hand, love me. They leave everyone else alone and make a feast of me.
Everyone always tells you never to scratch mosquito bites, but I’ve never been one to listen to everyone. But in this case, at least, I should have.
I got a mosquito bite on my left forearm and it swelled to a respectable size. And I itched it. I itched it until it bled.
(Mosquitos are one of the reasons that I despise spring.)
But, thanks to magic and a Band-Aid, the bloody wound eventually scabbed over.
(This post’s about to get somewhat gross. Squeamish readers, click off now.)
Another activity that I participated in as a naive child was the picking of scabs. *Shudders* Don’t worry, dear readers, I don’t do this anymore.
The scab was about a half-inch long (“How do I know this?” you ask. I still have a scar) and it covered a half-inch long wound. (I’m going to call it a wound. It makes the story more dramatic.)
During class, I did the inevitable and picked off the scab.
But, of course, it started bleeding profusely. (What else did I expect?)
So here I am, blood gushing from an open wound, my right hand clapped over it to try and stanch the flow, and my teacher, under the premise that nothing was wrong, merrily teaching away.
Thankfully, a few minutes later, she gave us time to work. I went up to ask the teacher for a Band-Aid, but there was another girl in front of me. I waited patiently behind her, still bleeding.
She needed a Band-Aid as well. For her papercut.
The nightmare then began.
Me: Uh, I need a Band-Aid, too.
Teacher: I’m sorry. We’re out of Band-Aids. Is it an emergency?
Girl: That’s fine. I don’t really need one.
Me: … Yeah. I guess it can wait.
It could not wait. It definitely could not wait.
Soon afterward, the teacher began to teach again. (It is her job, after all.)
And I’m still sitting there. Bleeding profusely.
I lifted my right hand to check if it had stopped bleeding. Nope. And my right hand was coated with blood.
At that point, a classmate, let’s call him Earl Omega, looked right at me. I held eye contact and glared at him with the full force of the laser-firing armada located behind my eyeballs.
I can’t remember what happened afterward because third grade was so long ago.
And now we’ll never know if Little Arachnid ever got that Band-Aid or not.
Miss me? No?
I know you do and I know you are clawing your eyes out, wondering, when I will come back (Besides mellow yellows). Did you think I was dead?
Let me tell you about a time where I was really dead on the inside, for a should-be-simple-school- group-project. For those who are wondering, this was a group project much like science fair that required two to three meetings. It was done on trifold boards with pictures of various things about a country assigned to us, and was solely based on the holiday season. On the day we were let out for Christmas Break, we would present and pass out homemade foods to the whole school. How jolly!
Well, to be honest, I was dead for quite a while before this. I was plagued with the illness of writer’s block, then sent to the fire to burn with this certain project in my life. It’s was called WHATW or Whatever Horseradish Anticipates To Wed. Of course, being a bridesmaid (leader) and all, I had to do a lot of things for this project, as I couldn’t let my ego hang up to dry after being soaked in shame. Right?
But there were some complications, as all projects do have sometimes. Nobody expects a perfect end result, but this thing—oh, it was just freckled with terrible outcomes! As I didn’t say, this was supposed to be a group project, but mostly it was all just me and a teensy bitsy little guy who could actually twiddle his fingers. For some reason, he was probably the guy who kept me from losing all my sanity. He was the only one who actually gave me something to put on the board.
One time in this particular project, we had to print pictures. A responsible-looking gentleman said: “May I take the task of printing the pictures? I have a color printer at home.” As a proper leader, I said, “Yes you may,” then emailed sternly after our meeting was over. “Get it to me before the next time we meet.” (Which was in two weeks may I add). He responded with, “cool.”
So I waited. In the meantime, I was preparing for Christmas too, smiling at a bunch of different holiday weddings (this was not part of the project). Procrastination and basically being too busy with the holiday weekend stuff held me back by a million miles.
I was also working on a another little project I like to call The Fleekness of Eyebrows. It was a fun-filled writing diary that I had complete control over, unlike the horseradish thing. As a writer, I obsessed over it and gave birth to a new child. In my pathetic defense for not writing blog posts, let me just say, it took some labor.
Nearing the end of the two weeks I was starting to get worried about the gentleman. He didn’t give me his pictures yet! Was he sick? Did he get injured? Was he dead? Frantically, I emailed him, wondering if the simple task of printing pictures has worked him to death. I asked, “Are you done with printing the pictures?” Not a single response came from him.
Soon, the next meeting rolled around. Flustered, I came in a bit late, almost crying when I saw a haphazard stack of colorful paper. IT WAS THE PICTURES. The gentleman was alive, stroking a piece paper with a nice layer of glue. I couldn’t believe it! He was alive! The pictures were right here!
Then I noticed a huge flaw. The pictures were printed on the front and back, so we couldn’t cut it out.
BLOBFISH!
To make a long story short, that’s how I was for the rest of the project.
When I read Spinette’s post How To Create a Difficult Time For A Person Who Wants to Borrow Your Pencil, one memory kept flitting through my head and I thought, Hey, I could write a post about that!
Since I hadn’t yet read Spinette’s post at the time of this story, I sadly did not take revenge on this person. Let’s call him Kevin.
So Kevin was a tall, lanky guy. He always reminded me of Kilorn from Red Queen. Have you ever noticed how tall people sometimes have a hunch from always having to literally look down upon people whilst communicating to make eye contact?
Anyway, he sat to my right, which is the important part of the story, and he asked me for a writing utensil. Now, I had my pencil case open and right in front of me so I couldn’t claim to not to have any extras. I didn’t particularly want to share my writing utensils either because ever since Luke bit my pink crayon in half in second grade, I’ve been reluctant to lend my possessions.
So, by the rules of politeness, I was forced to lend Kevin my purple gel pen.
I should’ve blatantly lied.
Throughout the course of the class, I noticed him chewing on the end of my pen.
Suffice it to say that I inconspicuously disposed of it.
“Can I borrow your pencil?”
We have all heard the phrase of the lunatic who can’t bother to carry a pencil or even a writing utensil at all times. Stupidity such as that just grinds my gears, because who wouldn’t want to have a multi-faceted-wooden-stick/writing-tool/weapon/stabber? I really can’t name a person who wouldn’t, except the pencil-borrowing shrimps who slug around and aren’t responsible enough to bring a pencil with them. Needless to say, I have been in the trauma-inducing situation of living without a pencil once or twice. But I am talking about that person who asks me ALL THE TIME for a pencil or pen and then ends up breaking it!
Do you want to get revenge on this person?
So first thing is first, find out about your borrower’s pencil habits. If not done so already, identify your pencil borrower. Do not just identify them, stalk them, know everything about them. See their behavior around pencils—what is his/her favorite type of pencil? What are his pencil pet peeves? How many times a day does he sharpen the pencil? How many lead refills does he need to last a year? These are all questions that are important to bring justice to your pencil borrower-breaker.
But the best thing to see, among all these things is this: How does he break the pencil? Keep in mind all his evil plans, from snapping the pencil in half to simply taking out lead from a mechanical pencil. Various writing-utensil-destroying methods may include exploding pens, filling in the top of a marker with another color, and pressing down on chalk so hard it becomes dust. Once you’ve realized what his worst type of pencil is, let’s say a normal wooden pencil, for example, move on to the second step.
From here, start giving out the culprit’s worst type of pencil, and make them almost unusable! Take out erasers, sharpen them until they are the shortest they could be, or do that thing where you take out the lead of a wooden pencil then put it back in so the next person who dares to borrow it has to go through the Seven Gates of Terrible Elementary Wooden Pencildom. So, for you rookies out there, let me introduce you to the seven gates.
Gate One is a dangerous warning of a dangerously stubby pencil— the master’s victim will have to push with all his might to get the last of the lead.
Next up, Gate Two, where he may have to go up to sharpen his pencil in front of the whole class with that old sharpener collecting cobwebs.
Now, he retreats back to his seat, ready for more writing when his lead snaps, which is Gate Three.
He goes back up again, Gate Five, his face reddening with shame.
Finally, when the sharpening is done, he wants to erase something, but he cannot because the lack of the eraser and also realizes that he has skipped the fourth gate, and now considers this the fourth gate.
The sixth gate involves asking desperately for an eraser and the master handsomely declines his request.
Annoyed, the master of the gates gives the young lad a handsome eraser.
The lad begins to erase, but he has scribbled all over his papers! The eraser writes instead of erases and is the greatest weapon in all of The Arts of Pencil Manipulation, also known as the last and seventh gate.
Step Three: repeat steps one and two over and over and over and over again. If your victim doesn’t get a new pencil, go on to the next step.
Now, it is ultimately time for step five, the most frightening and terrifying step of them all. Give them a vicious tool, an item that can never fill things in, virtually uneraseable:
THE CRAYON.
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