Confessions of a tall girl: November 2005

homemade applesauce

This is the label for my applesauce. At least the central running theme. I don't think at this point selling applesauce will make me enough money to do much more than buy Christmas presents. I'll keep making it though because the labels are going to be really cool complete with jokes and trivia about apples and chickens.

home movies going in the trash

I am watching in horror as my past is being played out before me. Tell me that a video camera in the hands of any other 11-14 year old would bring these tears of sorrow for the un-clever and thoroughly unwise. I am currently watching myself pretending to be interviewed by one of my friends and saying many deplorable adolescent things of which I will not incriminate myself. It is a truly humbling and uncomfortable experience watching yourself with your whole family doing things and saying things that make you cry from horror that this is you! and really not all that long ago, only 10 years. Even worse I can see myself in these horrid home videos and I can place the same annoying behavior in adolescents I encounter that I may earlier have marked as never amounting to much and definately never being wonderful and charming people in the end. I now selfishly hope it is possible for my own sake. I apologize to my friends for all my bad humor. I am greatful to them for their loyalty. Excuse me while I go dab my eyes.

consumating fall

appreciating the leaves

personifying joy through the leaves

becoming one with the leaves

kitty backpack

just for us

unlikely future B

Anyone who knows me can tell you that all of my ideas about how my future is going to turn out contradict eachother. I would like to devote this post to sharing with you the names of my six children I will never have. My firstborn will be male and will be named Fisher. This rules out marrying anyone with the last name of Fisher. Unfortunately that rules out a rather attractive young man I go to school with. Oh well, there are more fishers in the sea. My second bundle of joy will be a girl named Adria - named after a wonderful lady from western Washington, who has the world at her fingertips and drives a schoolbus. Third and fourth will be Thisbe and Wendell in no particular order. Thisbe is a girl's name and Wendell is my venerable Grandpa's name that means "wanderer." The fifth one is the most important because his name will be Quinton which means the fifth. I was going to stop there but I've one more good one. The baby in the family will be named Isabella. This is my non-family with perfect names. Sigh. goodnight

the vicarious providential circle

Little did Amanda know the significance of our conversation. The full weight of it is still being realized even as we speak. You see, my eyesight is set on one thing; that is a plane ticket. In order to get the plane ticket I got a job. That lasted a month until my rich kid motto, "never work, always play, don't think about long term goals" set in and I quit. Well it wasn't exactly like that, but for the sake of time I will spare the scandalous details. So without a job, gleaning money from my surroundings has required deliberation. For a short while selling fresh bread door to door glittered in my mind, but at about the same time my mental secretary reminded me that I've never baked a loaf of bread that rose. Back to square one. After several fleeting aspirations of selling artwork or popsicle stick birdcages died away, I pushed the issue from my mind. Swallow your dignity and ask your parents for an early graduation present, I said to myself, consciously crossing a line I had rigidly set (as rigid as my pampered personal law gets). In the midst of this whirlwind of internal conflict I talked to Amanda, who, along with Maranatha and Europe, is at the receiving end of the airplane I plan to board in exchange for my prospective hard-earned briefcase of 20's. Before I made the call I peeled a bag of apples, put them in a pot and turned the burner on low. Usually I take them out after 45 minutes and put them in the blender and say the magic words and applesauce appears, but this time I got understandably caught up in my dynamic and wonderful conversation with Amanda. So two hours later I followed my nose into the kitchen and my squishy pot of apples. To my happy surprise, the blender step had now become obsolete and the apple sauce was ten times better. Later that evening my mental secretary again gave me a memo, this time it was, sell applesauce you lazy infidel! So, to the market I will go to purchase bags of apples and mason jars to which I will emblazen a picture of amanda and an entreaty to support a noble cause.

Grasping for a Moral

That was a good movie, it makes you think. It makes life a little different color and a bit more luminescent. That sermon was a sword, splitting marrow and bone, truth and untruth. I do, I want to see that one; it looks like it would be insightful. If I somehow resolve this story it will make you smile and go on your way. What if I left this story unresolved? The little boy was playing in the sandbox and smacked his sister (this is where you finish the story for yourself and in a puff of foresight you predict, his mother spanked him or he became a terrible little boy or something) but instead...no ending, no moral. You will never know how that story ends. Troubling? Resolution is a healing medicine. The vacuum that is you left to your own thoughts is the roaming alternative. Without a bite-sized moral to the story, a void is left. I need a purpose for my appointment at three o’clock. Looking back over the week’s fortune cookie style collection of inspirationals, I say to the room, the contents of a box marked “Christmas tree ornaments, 1975-present” would have more unification and make much more sense together that this collage of lessons to live by. The compartmental joys some have had carrying with them the bubble gum wrapper with today’s success tip written across it is noble and true, don’t me wrong, but if I bristle it is because just the thought of walking into the trap life has set for me that I saw coming from a mile away but couldn't avoid because I'm busy reeling from moral to moral is fermenting in my mind. And yes, I have thought about myself a little too much today but it isn't just myself, it is you too. I want our lives to be better, you and I.

never a dull moment

This morning I had a perfect moment. Maranatha, your call patched me up. The whole household united in celebration. My internet even turned smitten and decided to work for five minutes so I could post a blog. You are my Christmas time. I'm afraid without your fountain of youth I would slip into mediocrity fast, but reading about your quick thinking and rising to the occasion inspires me to keep picking away at my prison and with a little more enthusiasm. Here's to you, you big, wonderful discovery of mine. They wonder when they will get to meet the girl that lives in my eyes.