economists do it with models.

I can't seem to get the words "tell me a story" out of my head. They remind me of vanilla and ridiculous non sequiturs. I wonder if I'll get to have that again. Unfortunately, that seems to be only the tip of the "things I miss" iceberg.

True, I miss it the most but it's also the thing I have the most chance of reliving. It's also the thing that brought me the most torment. I loathe feeling so close to something that is really a million miles away.

Cliche, yes.

I miss my nightly conversations that would last for hours. I miss feeling as though there was someone that understood what it was like to be afraid of those conversations. I miss the feeling of being alone with someone. I would join a club for shy people - if only I didn't feel so inept during social gatherings.

I miss when I didn't know, when I merely suspected. That was nice. It gave me a kind of hope and giddy quality that is supposed to be felt by a teen-aged girl. I can't even seem to let myself have that.

I miss when the end of summer was tragic not exciting.

I miss the feeling of "college" being something to briefly ponder when I was sick of feeling so young. I don't want to apply, I don't want to get accepted (I want to get rejected even less), I don't want to move away, I don't want to go to classes. But, at the same time, I want to be away. I want to be there.

I think I just want to go back to Chicago.

It's officially August in my timezone (and has been four a couple of hours!) and that makes me happy in a way that is fairly irrational.

I'm not a July kind of girl. February or July. They suck, they suck, they SUCK. Something about them, to me, feels like they go on for ages.

February is the dead of winter. It's when Michigan is looking its worst - the snowfall has decreased to a once-every-other-week kind of thing and yet none of it will go away. The roads are lined with this thick, brown ice-goo and the trees drip every once in a while. Nothing sparkles the way it did in December. Everything that looked so magical now looks pretty dead.

July is kind of like the summer equivalent to that, to me. June rocks. I'm living off the high that the beginning of summer brings and the temperatures that make me want to rebuild my relationship with the sun. (I'm fair-skinned. The sun is my enemy for most of the year.) Yeah, it's probably when our Michigan-famous construction is at an all-time high but, to me, that's summer. Closed roads.

But with July come the unbearable temperatures that make me remember why I love December so much. Mowing the lawn results in mini dust storms and an hour in the sun turns me into a lobster. (Literally! ;]) And you're supposed to be happy and on vacation and eating hot dogs. But what about the people that don't like meat or vacations or happiness? Huh? Where are they supposed to get joy?

July is like the Wednesday of the Bigger Picture. It's a way of saying "I'm halfway through with this week/season and I don't really know what to do with myself. Maybe I'll sit and twiddle my thumbs until it's over."

And, you know what, August brings me one step closer to September and, dear Lord, there's nothing I like better than the time from September 1 through December 31. (Although you can get rid of November, I wouldn't mind. And I'm thinking I MIGHT include August in there if it's good to me this year. This is a trial run.) I'm going to call that time period a season. And the season shall henceforth be known as "Awesome."

I think it is time for me to watch Stewart/Colbert and head off to bed. Yes, this is for the best.

I just wrote my first piece of Harry Potter fanfiction. I am not worthy of this fandom.

I have a confession to make: I’m human and I have insecurities. Shocking, I know, but it’s true.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of my legs and I don’t know if that comes from being short or being a woman or the beautiful combination of both. I don’t wear shorts or skirts unless it comes to (about) the knee. (Part of that comes from the constant trouble I have otherwise – I do not want to spend the entire day worrying about whether or not my skirt’s riding up a little too far.)

When I hurt my knee in January and was sentenced to five months on crutches, I didn’t really give my leg issues a whole lot of thought. (I was, honestly, a little angrier with my knee than I was with my thighs.) But the injured leg ended up shrinking a considerable amount so that now I’m in a place where my left thigh is seven centimeters in circumference larger than the right one.

This should make me feel increasingly insecure, right?

Not so much.

I’m more okay with the legs now because, after five months on crutches and two surgeries, they’re supposed to look the way they do. The right one is muscular and toned and I’ve never had legs like that so I’m kind of hoping that the supermodel-skinny left leg starts to tone soon too. I like it.

But, predictably, they’re still the things I’m most insecure about. But I’m okay with them, in fact, I love them. They’re my legs and I can walk now. That’s pretty much all that matters.

I don’t really have much to say other than that I’m switching back and forth between the Red Sox/Tigers game and the coverage of the Live Earth concerts and one is making me want to throw things across the room and the other is making me want to become a vegetarian. I should probably stick to watching Live Earth; at least it’s not raising my blood pressure.

Truthfully, I’ve thought about becoming a vegetarian for a really long time but I’ve never thought I could do it. The thing that’s the most difficult is when you’re a teenager and neither one of your parents support your decision at all. I tried it for a little while and then realized that I wasn’t eating at all. But, I don’t know, my mom just said she wanted to talk to me about my nonexistent junk food problem so maybe that’s a start.

(Although it is really irritating because she’s the only one that thinks there’s a problem, but whatever. Maybe if I can get her to buy some more vegetarian friendly things, I might be able to turn this situation around so that I’m the winner. And I do so love to win.)

It would have been awesome to have been at one of those concerts, I’m not going to lie.

I need to buy some energy efficient bulbs for my room. My mother thinks they’re the devil. I love how she seems to think that the environment is the enemy. Way to be a stereotype of a Republican mother, really.

It’s sad, because I don’t want to hate all Republicans because I know they’re not all as bad as she is but she’s making it really, really difficult.

Red Sox/Tigers game tomorrow! Unfortunately, it’s supposed to be crazy-hot. Oh, well, I’ll be okay with the burn as long as the Sox win.

I'm not sure if I have a crush on Tina Fey or on everything Tina Fey has ever produced and I'm also not sure that I care. All I know is that it's love and it's real.

Because of my new addiction to 30 Rock, I've played their online version of the popular game "Marry, Boff, Kill." I think the most fascinating thing is the popular results page. Barack Obama places number 6 under "Marry" with Hillary Clinton no where to be found on any of the lists. (Though she does come up in the game... frequently. It seems people can't quite figure out what to do with her.) I'd like to see this become the new way of polling. Or, hell, voting.

"Marry, Boff, Kill?
- Barack Obama
- Hillary Clinton
- Rudolph Giuliani"

What if we could systematically pick the president by using a sort of brackets system? Those that got the most kill votes in each round would be eliminated (but probably not killed) and it would go from there.

It would have to be fair. You'd first have to find the nominee from each party (plus the independents) without the use of conventions and with extensive primaries and the final round would consist of the top picks from each.

Actually, I'm not really sure what to do about the final round. What do we want more in a president? Sex, lifelong companionship, or pure unadulterated hatred?

I just got a spam message telling me to "beware of fake pills." This email then attempted to sell me pills to enlarge my nonexistent penis. I love it when my spam employs the use of reverse psychology.

I’m listening to The Bell Jar as read by Maggie Gyllenhaal. I first read this about a year ago when I was on a trip with my dad and, dear Lord, I don’t remember it being so cringe-worthy. I think a huge part of it comes from hearing it; sometimes I think it’s easier to gloss over certain things when reading.

Even Esther’s description of eating the caviar gets to me. I think that mostly comes from my complete and utter aversion to caviar. If it comes from the sea, I’m really not big on putting it into my mouth. And the fact that she got so sick after that dinner, blah.

Maggie Gyllenhaal kind of creeps me out. She’s just insane enough that the whole thing works really well. But I’m really not crazy about her voice even if her tone works really, really well for Esther. It’s so lazy sounding. She makes me want to speak and write in fragmented sentences.

Yeah, we’ll pretend that it’s Maggie Gyllenhaal’s fault that I can never form complete sentences.

But it is. I swear.

In other news, I'm absolutely crazy about my new default icon.

There was a point this year where I let my American Literature teacher know that I wanted to be a writer. I don’t know what put it into my head that it would be a good idea to share this information, but I regretted it every time thereafter that I had to write a paper for him.

My love of him became complete intimidation, and he is not an intimidating man. I’d told him something about me that I wasn’t even sure was still true. Yes, I want it to be true, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is.

I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. I wonder if it came from my days of reading L.M. Montgomery books and thinking that I was Anne. (She was so silly sometimes and, well, so am I.) I wonder if it’s the ideal of writing that gets to me – I want to be published but I don’t want to do any of the work. And, frankly, I’m not very good. I’m repetitive and my sentences are choppy. I know all this but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to be a bestselling author.

I don’t know why I can’t just be content to be a lawyer or a teacher. I’d be terrific at either one of those things, really. (Except for my mild fear of public speaking – and that’s what lets me know that I wouldn’t be happy in front of a courtroom or a classroom.)

I think I want to be famous.

I have these ideas that I want to help people. I think that maybe there’s this chance that I’ll make a good therapist or a good social worker. And, well, I probably would. But, again, I don’t think I’d be happy with that.

Because, despite my fear of public speaking, I want to appear on Ellen’s talk show and do something tremendously silly with her. I want to star on a sitcom and I say it’s because I want to make people laugh.

I hope that’s the reason, but I doubt it.

I’m afraid to die without anyone ever hearing my name. I want immortality. I know it’s not a reasonable request, but that’s what I’d love to get.

I think I’d make a really amazing super villain.

There's this girl in my sixth hour class (and I'm not a big fan of her) that's, as of today, also on crutches. The reason she's lost her ability to walk kills me just a little bit - she got into a bit of a situation at her soccer game, twisted her ankle, and continued to play on her injury. And I'm actually really upset about that because I feel like the one thing I've learned this year is how to trust and listen to my body.

I was also hurt because I was ignoring a little bit of minor pain. Before I started to attempt the splits, I told my friend that my knees were bothering me and they didn't feel very warm. And, sure enough, the second I started to try the splits, it gave out on me. This entire injury has been one big lesson in irony after another.

I've taken to seeing it as my body rebelling against the poor way I've been treating it. I'm not enough of a sap to think that if I totally change my ways, I'm never going to get hurt again, but that's just ridiculous. But there is a very big part of me that wonders if this would have happened had I listened to what my knees had been trying to tell me and just sat out that part (or the rest) of class.

And, as I said, I never used to be one for being particularly nice to my body. I've only recently gained a sort of confidence in my own skin where I've recognized that it's beautiful just the way it is. But I used to be an abusive host, always putting it down. Seriously not healthy. I used to accidentally skip meals because I just didn't have time to eat, I'd ignore the fact that I was sick and just plow on with everything I had to do despite the raging fever, I ignored injuries thinking that my body was just overreacting (as it will sometimes do, unfortunately), and when I did remember to eat, it wasn't the healthiest thing I could get my hands on.

I've had a lot of time over the past few months to think about my body and how much each part of it means to me. I love my legs, not just because they get me places but because they allow me to dance and kick my dog's ball and pick up things with my toes and curl up with my cat on my lap. I love my arms, not just because they can act as a substitute leg but because they can carry so much more than I know and they can give hugs and they can type and they can flourish. I love my knees because they can bend and they're stronger than even I know. And I've started to want to really take care of those things because they're suddenly important.

So I'm working on it. And, like everything else I tend to work on, it comes with setbacks but I keep moving forward.

1. The moon revolves around Earth. It is humble enough to know that it doesn't need an entire solar system revolving around it. The sun could stand to learn a lesson or two about humility.

2. You can look directly at the moon without fear of being blinded.

3. The moon does not play a role in warming the earth. Therefore, it is in no way responsible for global warming.

4. There is no man that lives on the sun.

5. The moon is made of cheese. The sun is not.

6. The moon has not, at this point in time, been linked to causing skin cancer. When questioned about his involvement in causing the death of millions of billions of people each year, the sun could only answer, "No comment."

7. There is no "Green Sun Gang." You want to know why? Because that's silly! The sun does not believe in wearing green - he hates Irish people. The moon, on the other hand, loves people of all races, genders, and sexualities. She does not discriminate.

8. With the moon, come the stars. The stars have helped countless lost souls navigate their way to safety - both literally and figuratively. I hate to bring this point up again, but gazing at the sun causes retina damage, not navigational assistance.

9. Animals do not howl at the sun. This is because animals do not worship the sun in the way that they worship the moon. If it's not good enough for a coyote, it's not good enough for me.

10. The moon has less gravitational pull than the earth. Walking on the moon allows one to jump really, really high. Walking on the sun causes fiery death.

I don't like taking the ACT twice in one month. Even if the teacher that gave it today reminds me of Janice Dickinson. (Because that's probably more of a negative anyway.)

That's all.

I've been on crutches since January 11 and I will continue to be on them for the remainder of my Junior year. They'll be my dates for prom, they'll be helping me celebrate my seventeenth birthday, and they were my Valentine's Day dates. I've been through one surgery and I still have another one to go. I'll be dealing with physical therapy during my summer vacation. That wasn't supposed to happen - I was supposed to be able to walk (without surgery) on February 2.

My surgery went wrong.

When I popped my knee out at dance on January 11, I was told that I'd knocked off a few very small pieces of bone. What the x-rays didn't show was that a very large (two centimeter) piece had also been knocked off from the underside of my kneecap. My doctor discovered this during surgery and determined that this needed to be fixed in order to protect me from arthritis. But that's just the back story.

I've cried exactly three times because of this. once when it originally happened - I was so pissed off with myself that it brought tears. Then when I found out I was going to have surgery - that's always been one of my biggest fears. Finally, when I was coming out of surgery - I don't respond well to anesthesia and was so very nauseous that the only logical thing to do was to cry.

I don't complain because my arms hurt or my leg hurts. I don't complain because I can't always carry everything I want to. (I can carry either the box of cereal or the gallon of milk, not both.) It just doesn't bother me. It seems the the only thing that is really bothering me is that I can't carry my cat around anymore. (That and how I'm having to face my fear of stairs in an insane way every single day.)

I'm going to be completely honest here, I'm proud of myself. I never thought I was the kind of person that was strong enough to handle this, but I'm glad that I am. I just do and get through it because I have to. And that's more than I could have hoped for. I'm actually amazing myself every single day and that's pretty cool.

I just have to say, I'm not really a huge fan of the super-intense pain medications. Nor am I a fan of doctors that don't notice that you have a hole in your knee cap until after they begin operating.

I do, however, love dance teachers who send flowers. Even though I hate that she feels as though this is all her fault.

I will explain when I'm not longer high.

I'm beginning to believe that the universe is begging me to spend the rest of my life playing the violin. It's not so much a matter of me enjoying it or being good*, I just keep finding myself in situations where I'm being forced into staying. Well, actually, there have only been two but they've both been this month. I think that's more than enough justification to begin to believe that the universe is conspiring against me.

First, I hurt my knee really, really badly. This is not significant in itself other than to say that had I not hurt my knee, I would be on my last few months of violin lessons. I'd planned to quit violin and voice this summer in order to take ballroom dancing classes. As it seems that I'm not going to be able to dance anymore, I have no reason to quit violin. And, because I've been with it too long, I just can't quit without a really spectacular reason. (Such as ballroom dancing - something I've wanted to do since first seeing The Sound of Music. Viennese Waltz, anyone?)

Just when I'd started to accept my fate, something else happened. Up until yesterday, I'd been comforted in the knowledge that, even if I was to continue taking private lessons, I didn't have to play in my high school orchestra. (Which I hate. I'm student aiding for the aforementioned Economics teacher in order to get out of taking that class. And I'm spending way too much time worrying that the orchestra director is going to catch me in the act.)

And then it happened.

It appears that next year (my Senior year), we're switching to a trimester system. This means that, while we will only have five classes a day, we'll have fifteen credits to fill instead of just twelve. I was already at a loss about how I was going to fill two. This means, if I'm doing my math correctly, I'll have FIVE trimesters to fill. Orchestra takes up two. If I pair that with Sociology and either another AP social studies class or Forensics, it works out just perfectly. And I don't really have many other options. (Because it's not really like I'm jumping to take two AP social studies classes next year - because I took all the good ones this year - or Forensics, they're just my best choices as far as I can see. Because I just don't think I could deal with Shakespeare and Mythology and World Religions doesn't exist as of two weeks ago.)

All I want to do is just drop the lessons and the class, keep teaching viola, and dance. I'll be lucky to be able to keep teaching. Fortunately, I'm currently finding this more amusing than discouraging. I was never meant to be a dancer, and I pretty much always knew that so that's not too heartbreaking. (Don't get me wrong, it's heartbreaking but not in the way that you'd think.) And what's one more year of violin lessons?

Long and boring, just like this post.

*Because I'm really, really NOT.

My AP Economics teacher is slowly but surely ruining my life. I think she's trying to, and that's what makes it even worse. It seems as though the only thing on her agenda is being The Devil and she's making quick work of achieving her goals. Because there is no better way to discuss my sheer and complete disgust than in list format, that's how it's going to go down...

1. I can no longer eat fast food or consume dairy products (sans Ben & Jerry's). I'm sorry, but prior to November 18, I lived off of fast food. Until, suddenly, with her intense prodding, I realized that putting money into the pocket of a CEO at McDonald's was not a good way for me to be spending my time/money.

And then she makes us watch The Corporation which has a particularly disgusting section about rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone - increases milk production in cows) which made me turn away from my new-found love for milk with shame. I was finally learning to appreciate the finer things about milk - how it could perfectly compliment a bowl of Fruit Loops, how a couple tablespoons made my coffee that much more enjoyable. And now I'm left with nothing because, ew. I can't do it. When they're using words like "pus" and "bacteria" in talking about milk, it's time for me to start looking for alternatives.

In reading the side of a tub of Ben & Jerry's, I've learned that they don't approve of getting their cream from suppliers that use rBGH. While this is encouraging, I know I have to take it with a grain of salt - they also say that they can't really control what their candy/other stuff suppliers do. Still, I can't give up the creamiest, most delicious food on the planet and the fact that they say that makes me smile a bit. And they have organic ice cream - they're trying. ("Yeah, to cash in on a market of people who aren't as price-sensitive as they could be," says the cynical being in me.)

2. She gave me the much coveted and highly anticipated A+ for my semester grade. She had the nerve to challenge me to get one on the exam so that I could take home that shiny "+" to hang on my refrigerator. And, you know what I did? I STUDIED. I worked hard to pull of that grade and what does that leave me with? The knowledge that I'm going to have to work just as hard next semester. (Not to mention a really amazing understanding of production possibilities curves and profit-maximizing points.)

Unfortunately, because I was already studying for Economics, I took a "what the hell" approach and studied for my other classes as well. Because of her, I got an A on my English exam - meaning I kept my 4.0 and still have a shot at being valedictorian. Therefore, I can't just give up on my grades in general because there's still that possibility.

3. Saved the worst for last.

She appreciates my writing, even and especially my silly writing. She encourages me to put in an effort and then responds to it in a really thoughtful and interesting way. Not only have I been sitting in Psychology crafting Economics Fairy Tales, I've been dabbling around in writing short stories again. It sucks because I'd always wanted to be a writer but sort of gave up when I kept getting D's on my English essays.

...It's pretty easy to see, after all that, how my life has been ruined by this woman's thoughtlessness. Yet, I'm going to take the moral high ground here and say that, in all that horribleness, she's probably taught me something. I mean, I guess it's her fault that I know that David Ricardo was the first one to say, "Hey, comparative advantage rocks!"

Coolest teacher ever.

I know I'm about a year too late weighing in on this, but I thought I should at least give the thing a chance before I spouted off an initial reaction filled with rage and disgust. I've been around long enough to remember LiveJournal from just after the invite system was done away with and I'm one of those people that's completely resistant to change. I'd rather not change my sheets because the switch between colors can throw me off. (I get through it, don't worry.) So it's probably not too surprising that my initial reaction to the no-longer-new LiveJournal toolbar was fear and loathing (in Michigan).

But, being the kind of diplomatic person I can be on a not-so-regular basis (and the fact that I'm completely lazy) led me to having it stay around for a few months. I ignored it at first, but once I noticed the oh-so-helpful "View my Friends Page" link, I was hooked.

It's bad and can be completely attributed to my laziness. I love not having to go through two or three clicks to get from a fellow LiveJournaler's page to my own friends page. I'd always thought that was one of the least appealing things about LiveJournal, which is saying a lot. (If that's the biggest problem, that has to mean this is an absolutely brilliant site - and it is!)

This slowly evolved into my delight in being able to log on and off from any page on the entire site. You never know when you'll be in an emergency situation where you have approximately three seconds to log out of LiveJournal or else the world explodes. (Happens to me all the time, to be quite dishonest.) We can all breathe a sigh of relief knowing that, with the use of that snazzy toolbar, we will no longer have to worry about exploding worlds. (Unless the exploders can come up with something else, but I don't really think they're that bright!)

So, there. I've said my two cents. It's late, but I'd just glanced up at my beautiful toolbar and absolutely knew that I had to pay it the respect it so greatly deserves. And now ice is pounding against my window, so I go now.