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
Writing after so long, my joints feel rusted and achy. Sitting down to write even this took the effort of climbing a mountain (or at least a really tall hill) and the procrastination of a month.
I hope that I can slide into my voice again like a pair of well-worn gloves, or find a new one that’s suitable. I hope my writing muscles haven’t atrophied and I’ll find my way again with some stretching, but for now, I feel adrift, and scared that I can no longer do the thing I used to do. That I can no longer claim my love of reading and writing when I no longer read and write.
Not writing has made writing terrifying. This document sat blank for weeks as I sat steeped in my terror before I could make myself mar the white sheet.
Before putting pen to paper, my pages of ideas are just beautiful potential swirling around in my head. Realizing them would mean to make them imperfect. What if I find I’m a worse writer than I used to be, after gathering dust? What if I am no better after all this time? I don’t feel very funny anymore.
Other things are just so much easier than creation. I’m learning Python and I have a job. During the school year I studied and did STEM. For all these things, I just follow the instructions, or memorize, or use the problem to find the solution. Writing and drawing is creating from scratch, and that’s harder and scarier. It means pulling things out of my own brain and examining them and I’m not sure I’ll like what I find. I read instead of write, and I don’t have to use my brain for that, I can just fall in love over and over.
Writing feels like a luxury of time that I’ve convinced myself I don’t have. In the race to go to the college I want, to get the grades I want, to be the living version of STEM, writing seems like a waste of time when I could be doing something “productive”. But when I know I will have time in the future, writing is the thing I look forward to. The dream of writing feeds me through the bleak months of the grind, but when I have time (like now, in this easy breezy summer), I don’t, because there are easier things, because I still feel like, I always feel like, I’m running out of time.
And still I have a hunger for writing. It fills a space in me that has been empty for too long.
And still I feel written out. After writing essay after essay after essay for colleges and scholarships that all amounted to nothing, after the exhaustion of writing and building a version of myself that wasn’t a lie but felt too shiny, the dings and dents glossed over, I feel written out and dry. But I guess that writing isn’t this writing. This writing feeds, it doesn’t drain, even if it’s scary.
I think I need to make time to write.
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).
Greetings, peoples of the universe. It’s been a while, much longer than I planned to be gone. But school’s been crazy (which was to be expected). I will try to write more because I think I should have more fun and study less (but it is most likely that this will not happen. Don’t we always talk about things we mean to do eventually, but probably won’t).
We were assigned a piece mimicking the Declaration of Independence for English, and I chose to write about cacti (very on-character), and since it turned out well, I am stealing it for the blog. Since this was an assignment, I made time to write. Maybe I should start viewing having fun as homework. Hmm…
Background info: Way back when, America was a British colony, and then America didn’t want to be a colony anymore for various reasons, so we declared our independence from Britain in the Declaration of Independence. That is the end of this edition of Arachnid’s Oversimplified Explanations.
When, in the course of a cactus life, it becomes necessary for one to dissolve the relationship which connects them with an irresponsible plant owner, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate life to which they are entitled, a decent respect to the owner requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all plants are endowed with certain unalienable rights; that among these are sunlight, water, and a responsible plant owner. That to secure these rights, houseplants appeal to humans to provide them with their needs; that, whenever the plant owner becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the cactus to dissolve the relationship and insist on a new type of garden for the owner, laying its foundation in plastic. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that healthy plant-owner relationships long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience has shown that plants are more disposed to suffer, while they survive, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses leads to multiple plant deaths, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a relationship and live an independent plant life outdoors. Such has been the patient sufferance of the cacti; and such is now the necessity that constrains them to alter their plant-owner relationship. The history of the present owner of the cacti is a history of repeated darkness and forgetful watering, resulting in the deaths of numerous cacti. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
She has left her plants in a room with closed windows for most of their lives and has prevented their photosynthesis.
She has neglected to water them, resulting in parched dirt.
She has left them in pots too small for their roots.
She has never given them fertilizer.
She has never cared.
She has given them stupid and decactusizing names that she can never remember.
She had allowed a glued-on fake flower to remain on one of her cactus for their entire life, an atrocity.
For the deaths of many, many cactus.
For failing to properly screen her plant sitters, resulting in a shattered pot, the decapitation and ultimate death of the cactus with the fake flower, and the maiming of another.
For the death of her succulent, who rotted suddenly.
For the death of her grafted cactus, who dried up for unknown reasons.
For the death of the maimed one, who sank in the dirt and died of unknown causes.
For purchasing an innocent, baby cactus she couldn’t take care of and that died immediately due to overwatering.
For forgetting the deaths of the others.
For killing every plant she has ever owned.
For leaving only one lonely cactus alive, who will most surely die soon.
For refusing to change her ways when we started dying.
For not relinquishing her ownership when we continued to die.
For mocking us with her cactus pins and cactus costume while we died.
Through it all, we have begged and pleaded on our imaginary knees in the most humble manner for her to water us, to open the blinds, to give us larger pots, to give us away. It was not much to ask, but our repeated petitions have been met only by repeated injury. A human whose character is thus marked by abuse and irresponsibility is unfit to be the owner of cacti.
Nor have we left her unaware of our complaints. We have warned her, from time to time, that our roots were pressed against the sides of our pots. We have reminded her of our sickness with our pale green pallor, our stick-thin, thirsting bodies. We have appealed to her supposed kindness with our imaginary, large, sad, soulful eyes; and we have asked her to stop the cruelty, which would inevitably remove us from her life.
She has been deaf to the voice of justice and cactus. We must, therefore, by necessity, remove ourselves from her. If she changes her ways, though, we are willing to be friends.
We, therefore, the single remaining cactus and the ghosts of the others, in spirit assembled, appeal to the Supreme Cactus for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good cacti of this city, solemnly publish and declare, that this cactus and all future cacti are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent Plants; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the Monstrous Arachnid, and that all connection between them and the Monstrous Arachnid is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent plants, they have the full power to remain outside, photosynthesize, absorb rain and sunlight, and to do all other acts and things which independent outdoor plants may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Cactus, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our spines, and our sacred honor.
Greetings, nonexistent peoples of the blogosphere! (I suppose you really are nonexistent now, after my little disappearing act.) I’ve returned from my unannounced, unplanned hiatus. You must’ve thought that I’d gone to the Alaskan wilderness to meet the narwhals, and I’m flattered that you thought I was such an adventurous person, but alas, it’s been far more mundane. I’ve actually been only two feet from my laptop and unable to blog because school. Blech.
It’s been a touch more insane than I expected. However, it’s summer now! Well, until Tuesday. I have to go to summer school, BUT I should still have more time, so I can blog again! Hopefully. *Confetti*
So this is where I tell you that I’ve decided that my course load was far too much this year, so I’ll take easier classes next year. And while that’s the sensible thing to do, I’ve decided to take three AP classes, which is three times more than I took this year, and I’m now on the board of the one club I’m a part of. Plus SATs. (Which is, like, nothing compared to what some people do. These magic humans do not sleep.) So, as I had no time to blog this year, I probably won’t next year, either.
So what’s my plan to keep the blog from crashing and burning again? Because I really don’t want to disappear again. I really missed you, nonexistent readers, and I missed writing, too. So, my plan: I’m going to cut back on the frequency of posts to one a week (I know, how sad) and I’m going to try and schedule an entire school year’s worth of posts this summer. Will this work out? Who knows. *Shrugs*
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.
Time is, unfortunately, limited. There is only so much you can have. It is also elusive. The slippery thing always seems to slip through your slippery fingers, doesn’t it? There never seems to be enough to go around.
They say you can make time, but can you, really? You can only rearrange time, redistribute it. Imagine that time is a carrot cake. You can give adequate slices to some, slivers to the undesirables, and crumbs to the vermin, but you still only have one cake, or twenty-four hours, to give away. If you need more time for something, you have to cut the time from something else. And unfortunately, things must be prioritized and it’s usually the things you enjoy that you find yourself having no time for.
But what if you could make more time? What if you could bake another cake? What if some gifted magician out there concentrated really hard and snapped his fingers and the day was suddenly, magically, twelve hours longer?
I was listening to a podcast, Ear Biscuits, the other day that posed this question. What if the day had an extra twelve hours? There are some stipulations: You wouldn’t need to sleep any longer and you wouldn’t have to work more. So if you truly had extra time, what would you do?
First of all, even though we don’t have to, I’d sleep more. Because couldn’t we all use some more sleep? The world would be a much happier place if only we weren’t all sleep deprived.
Second, though, I have no idea. There’s a difference between what I’d probably do and what I want to do.
In all honesty, if I had extra time, I’d most likely just work more. I’m like a goldfish, the amount of work I do expands with available time. (Note: The things about goldfish expanding with available space is a myth, but let’s just go with it because I like the analogy.) Even if I ran out of work, I’d probably find more. There’s an endless list of things I could do in order to be more productive. I could double-check my assignments, I could do the next day’s homework, I could study for the test in three weeks, I could read ahead, etc. That’s just how I roll.
However, since this is a purely hypothetical situation that can’t actually happen, let’s talk about the things I’d want to do. I’d probably just do more of the things I already do in my (rare) free time. Ergo, I’d read, write, blog, and draw more. I might even spend time with actual, real-life human beings instead of conversing with my textbooks. (I wouldn’t recommend them as partners in conversation. They’re very dull, very dry, they have poor taste in humor, and they only talk obsessively about one topic.) I might take up a new hobby, go on an adventure, who knows? I’d really like to have time to just sit and think (aka daydream) and people watch. (People can be really entertaining.)
So, in conclusion, this year, I’m going to try to be more efficient at doing my homework and I’m going to attempt to not go overboard with the amount I work, all in order to create free time. Think of it like I’m concentrating my work into a smaller sliver of time, without diluting the quality, somehow. (Except it’s not really true that it’s my New Year’s Resolution. I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions. I think if you have a goal or some plan for self-improvement, you shouldn’t wait for the New Year as an excuse to start. That seems a bit like procrastinating. Make your goal happen now. And besides, New Year’s Resolutions are notorious for never being kept anyway. My goal isn’t really a New Year’s Resolution. It’s a goal I’ve had since October, but one I’ve utterly failed at. I just thought I should tie in this post to the New Year somehow because I didn’t want yet another holiday to pass by without acknowledgement.)
And what would you do, dear nonexistent reader, if you suddenly found twelve extra hours plopped into your hands?
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.
At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate; this far from civilization the boys can do anything they want. Anything. They attempt to forge their own society, failing, however, in the face of terror, sin and evil. And as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far from reality as the hope of being rescued. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies is perhaps our most memorable tale about “the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart.”
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).
Welcome back to A Stream of Random Thoughts, where I will use a random word generator to generate a random word. After which I will say whatever crosses my mind!
Doesn’t that sound like fun? That sounds like a ton of fun!
Aren’t you EXCITED?!
(Can you tell by my tone that I have once again done WAY too much homework? I’m doing this while I’m trying to figure out my physics in the back of my head. It’s somewhere back there. It just has to emerge as the correct answer.)
…
…
What a wonderful word! I was thinking today, as I was walking down the hallway of my school, preparing to acquire more homework (aka, go to class), that some words are pretty because of what they mean, like bunny or happy or clover, and some are pretty because of the way they sound, like grotesque or ubiquitous or arbitrary.
bunny. happy. clover.
grotesque. ubiquitous. arbitrary.
I AM SENSING SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THESE WORDS.
My mind has exploded. You peeps must be wiping brain matter from your computer screens. Because that’s how it works. My brain explodes on THIS side of the computer, and my brain matter ends up on THAT side. (Look how connected we are. We’re friends. *Warm squishy feels*.) If only it worked like that. Then I could just reach through and steal all the cookies you guys bake without me. *pouts*
My brain is a mush. Bleh. Blech. Blah.
Blech is my favorite.
Has it occurred to you that I haven’t talked about the word sniff yet? So I was planning to go back around in a giant magical circle, but I got sidetracked because, with only slight exaggeration, my brain is a LITERAL MUSH. Bleh. Blech. Blah.
I’m breaking all the grammar rules with these fragment sentences and run-ons and WeIrd cAPitiliZAtions.
Hold on, my friend is texting me about the physics. She said my lab report was fine the way it was. She’s the second person who’s told me that. BUT I LOVE TO WORRY.
Well, back to sniffing. You sniff— I forgot about the magical circle!
Okay. I had to go figure out more physics and help Scorpion with math homework. But I’m back! And so is the magical circle.
But then I left again to wash my hands.
At this point, you guys probably think that the magical circle is way cooler than it actually is. It’s not. I hate to crush your hopes and dreams. I was just going to say that sniff is not pretty at all. It doesn’t mean a pretty thing and it doesn’t sound pretty either.
Sniff, in my opinion, is a rather annoying sound. That great inhalation. The even worse exhalation that comes afterward. Why do people even need to breath? That constant exchange of breath. Yeah, I just breathed in the air that was just INSIDE YOUR LUNGS, random stranger that I’m sitting next to on the airplane. I hate airplanes. And don’t even get me started on sneezing.
I’m just generally against most bodily functions. Blech.
Am I spouting weird mind-thoughts, peeps? My brain is a literal mush. Mushy mushy mush. Like a caveman mashed potato. You, dear reader, might be questioning the random caveman thrown in there. I am too. I don’t know, that’s what my brain decided to think when I actually meant MASHED POTATO. I pictured a mashed potato while I said a caveman.
That’s right. Welcome to my brain, where a mashed potato is a caveman.
How do you mash your potatoes, dear reader? (I always spell potato wrong, in its singular form. I always add an extra e.) Do you buy the boxed powder? Do you imagine the potato as the head of your enemy and aggressively throw it off of a tall building? Do you wash your hands thoroughly, imagine the potato as the head of your enemy, and destroy it bare-handed?
Do you, dear reader, believe that I need more sleep?
I’m Back (What’s your name?)
(haha corny jokes)
Well, I’m sort of back. Arachnid might’ve told you about how I can’t go into my WordPress account anymore because the password tap danced out of the confines of my otherwise junkyard of a brain. I’m sorry for not being on the blog for so long and not being as dedicated, but from now on I’ll try my best to post every week.
So the situation is (for now anyway) that I will write the blog on google docs first then I’ll give it to Arachnid to post under my name. It’s kind of like sockpuppet situation where the hand goes into the sock, but the sock does all the talking, if you know what I’m getting at.
Since I left, a lot of things have happened to me. I’ve been tossed into a new setting, trying to fend for myself in the vigorous cycle of high school. I’d say looking for the best human cluster to follow to my next class is the hardest thing to get the hang of. Making friends is difficult because all of my peers say I’m way too particular about how the class smells. (But I need to voice my opinions, right?)
Right now, my octopus Anipharas is sleeping and looks like a brown undersea spectacle of the senses. He brings a calm sea to my soul as well as make me swoon. I wish I could take a picture (my octopus is quite photogenic) but that would wake him up. His ears are very sensitive.
That wraps things up, I guess. I hope I can make more frequent blog posts in the future.
Bye ❤
Hello, nonexistent peeps!
So as you may know, I recently went to my cousin’s wedding in New York. The wedding was really different from my other cousin’s wedding in Bangladesh. While the Bangladesh wedding was strictly traditional and tedious, the New York one consisted of three straight days of partying with much alcohol involved. While I don’t enjoy parties (or people in general) I did have fun discovering a new version of people-watching: Drunk people-watching.
The drunken peoples did many, many idiotic things. It was hilarious.
One dude was very, very drunk and he was dancing flopping like a fish out of water. At one point he fell asleep on my cousin’s shoulder, and my cousin just let him stay there. After that, he fell asleep on the floor for a bit before finally sleeping on one of the tables at the banquet hall.
The drunk peoples also wriggled around on the floor doing a “snake dance”.
Before people got overly drunk, there were some social struggles. I was wearing an off-the-shoulder dress at the party, and an older lady touched my shoulder and asked if it was the style or if it was ripped. I usually keep my sarcasm inside my head with strangers, but I was annoyed, so it kinda slipped out and with a little extra bite. I said, “No, it ripped” with an unspoken Of course it’s the style. This is obvious. And it’s rude to ask people if their clothing is torn. *Shrugs* I was feeling mean. And then EVERYONE within earshot gasped. My mom tried to play it off because I had, in fact, just ripped my skirt.
Soon after, I was retrieving my food from the buffet and I was trying to pick up the naan, but I dropped the tongs on the floor. I tried to get the waiter’s attention while the line was growing behind me. The lady behind me told me to just put it on the table. As soon as I exited the line, a new waiter arrived and put the tongs BACK IN THE FOOD.
and I didn’t say anything.
At the actual wedding, I wore a dress that weighed a LOT. I’m certain that if someone weight trained with it, they would grow some serious muscles. (Is that the proper terminology?!) My mom said that I could change out of the dress after a couple hours, but then she accidentally left the normal dress in the car, which was driven away by a valet-dude. But I convinced my mom to let me wear my sneakers with the dress. So people were drunk. Other people got married. One of my cousins asked his wife who she was. One cousin tried to give away his credit card. One person I don’t know was feeding people desserts from a communal spoon. Etc. Many cousins wriggled on the floor pretending to be snakes.
There was also this priest-dude. In the middle of a ceremony, he got a phone call. He talked for fiveish minutes, in the middle of the ceremony. “Yep. Hi. Sup. Yeah, I’m marrying some peeps right now.” And then after the phone call, he started the ceremony over again.
Bonus: A Random, Unrelated Rant.
So yesterday, we got our schedules for school and mine was pretty messed up. They kicked me out of the honors math program and put me in precalculus instead of honors precalculus. This is because I’m doing the class as a tenth grader with eleventh graders and the upperclassmen get priority for honors. Because I’m in regular precalculus, all the honors precalculus homework that I spent the summer doing is now obsolete and the year after, I’ll have to do Calculus AB instead of Calculus BC like the honors kids.
On top of that, instead of a biology class I REALLY wanted, I got health and architectural design, which a super bummer because no one likes health (which I’d planned to do over the summer) and I’m not interested in architecture. So instead of the biology class, which is full, I asked for Physics, but that’s full, too. So then I asked for Spanish 3, but that doesn’t work either. My friends who also wanted the biology class all ended up with Physics. This is awful because I wanted more science.
I am like cookie monster. I want math/science.
GIVE ME.
I’m upset.
Heyo, peeps!
Due to the impending doom that is finals, our blogging might be a bit more erratic.
So while Spinette and I are gone and doing much less interesting activities, we’re going to turn to reblogging for postings.
During midterms, we reblogged our own older posts, but this time we’re going to reblog posts from other peoples in the blogosphere!
Doesn’t that sound exciting?
So do you want your blog post reblogged on TheWebWeavers? It’s simple, just leave a link in the comments, and bam, new readers! But there’s one condition. (Sorry. I know everyone hates that word.) You have to leave a link to your favorite post from someone else’s blog as well.
Hey guys! Today’s post is going to be short because I have to write a four-page essay. *Commence miniature melt-down*
(I’ve actually already finished the essay and am in the proof-reading stage. I’m just in the post-essay writing freak-out phase.)
The lovely Cat on the Bookshelf tagged me for this one exactly one month ago. (I’m so bad at doing tags in a timely matter. Don’t hate me.)
For this tag, you’re supposed to spell out your name with books on your TBR. Unfortunately, half of my TBR is floating somewhere in the great depths of my mind so this might be a bit tricky.
So, let us begin!
Well, I failed that…
Can you guys think of any book recommendations for the missing letters? (Not that my TBR needs a growth spurt.)
Do you have any questions that need answering? Send them to Ask TheWebWeavers using the Contact Page. Please specify if you want your letter to be anonymous. If you want the world to know who you are (otherwise known as this small corner of the internet), we’ll add a link to your blog to help spread the love.
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.
Sleep is that wonderful time between being awake where everything is bliss and there is no homework or taxes to worry about.
But it’s so hard to sleep for enough time, what with the hectic schedule that comes with being awake and often spills into the nighttime hours. I usually have to get up at 6 a.m., which is before the sun rises and therefore inhumane.
People keep telling me to take a nap when I start nodding off in the middle of conversations or trip over my imagination and fall, but I refuse to sleep during the daytime when there is a sun in the sky, telling me that there is work to be done (however inefficiently).
I remember back in kindergarten when there was rest-time. Ahh, rest-time. Such horrible memories.
There is a large difference between rest-time and naptime. When you have naptime, you are supposed to sleep. When you have rest-time, you are supposed to lie on the hard floor quietly, doing nothing, saying nothing, and staring at nothing. But you are not supposed to fall asleep. Never fall asleep! It was absurd.
But this nothingness was only supposed to last a few months into the school year. Once we learned to read, we were expected to read during rest-time. I, on the other hand, couldn’t really read well until first grade, so I continued to spend the time doing nothing with a book in front of my face.
But before the class, as a whole, could read, we were to bask in our nothingness, but nothingness is quite boring, especially for a fidgety five-year-old. So what is a fidgety five-year-old to do other than fall asleep?
So I fell asleep. And my lovely kindergarten teacher didn’t wake me up (Shoutout to you, Ms. K, the best kindergarten teacher in existence). But the class could not wait for me, a tired and fidgety five-year-old, to get the sleep she needed. They had things to learn! So while I was asleep, the rest of the class read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and made construction paper palm trees. They were glorious.
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.
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