So Much For That

Two years later, I'm just using this account to follow and comment on other blogs. My xanga links in the sidebar are more up-to-date if you're interested in my life.

-Sarah

Tomorrow or the Day After

Tomorrow or the day after that, I am going to get into my car (despite the fact that the gas light is on) and drive south and then east and then south.

Tomorrow or the day after that, I am going to leave a note for my room mate and not return until well past bedtime.

Tomorrow or the day after that, I am going to find myself on a bench by the sea and watch children fill their buckets with sand.

Tomorrow or the day after that, I am going to pretend that I have no obligations and leave my car in a two hour lot for much longer than that.

Tomorrow or the day after that, I am going to find that I have put everything off until tomorrow or the day after and that I am far too old and tired and busy to do any part of everything.

Sophomoric Musings

So far (and it is only the second day), living on campus as a second year is quite different than living on campus as a freshman. I'm not sure if I'd really say it is better, but I secretly might think so. I don't know if it's just because the housing is more like the way real people live, but that could be it. We now have a kitchen with an actual stove. I have more closet space than I know how to fill.

Also, it could be that I knew what to pack and what to expect this year, or it could be that we now have a rug in the bathroom.

There is something really comforting about stepping out of the shower onto a plush, green rug.

I wish there was more to say than this, but there isn't. I've got some nice room mates. We have a fish tank. My window has a nice view of the parking lot.

Back in '94

Somehow, I thought that my Antarctica thing started in high school. I can remember: It was Palm Sunday during my sophomore year, and I was flipping between "The Ten Commandments" on ABC and some special about the Endurance Expedition on PBS. That was the day I met Ernest Shackleton. *swoon*

Um. Right. However, before I came home for summer, my dad cleaned out the junk under my bed and found a notebook I had in the first grade. Mrs. Hicks did a unit on penguins and Antarctica, and there were several entries in my notebook (prompted of course) about those things.

I've been meaning to scan some and post them all summer, and I'm just now getting around to it. So here:


I gave up after that first reason... I guess the English conditional tense was just too much for me.

Man. That would be sweet.

Yes, it's true. Some penguins are in fact babies. I was so in tune with nature at that age.

It's funny because penguins are now decidedly not my reason for wanting to go to Antarctica, and back then, they were the only reason I could imagine. But, gosh, wasn't I cute?

Ryan the Interim

Ryan was two years ahead of me. I'm fairly certain that we met on my first day of seventh grade, but I could be wrong. I don't like to think extensively about it because I was painfully idiotic around practically anyone older than me.

Our school was a combined junior and senior high school, and we all fit nicely on a campus which had once been just a junior high. There were around 100 students in each grade, seventh through twelfth. In general, everyone knew everyone else or at least, could recognize a fellow student if one was spotted on the street or at the mall.

Because of this, Ryan was friends with my eldest brother despite the fact that David was a senior and Ryan just a freshman. I use the term "friends" loosely. As David tells it, Ryan once tied him to a chair and left him face down in a puddle. Either way, that is how he and I met. My older brothers and I would arrive at school earlier than most, and Ryan would already be there. One almost got the feeling that he was always there.


It seems almost as though I led two separate social lives in seventh grade. I made friends with kids my own age at break and at lunch time, but before and after school, I spent time with my brothers and their high school friends.

I made some of my best friends in seventh grade. Michael was in my PE class, but I didn't officially "meet" him until his friend tried to sell me chicken at lunch time. I bought some but never received it (I'm still waiting to get my 30 cents back). KellyAnn sat next to me in Math for most of the year, but I didn't officially "meet" her until we were in the school production of West Side Story. I was a Jet girl, she was a Shark guy (Most of the "guys" in that play were actually girls). Amy was still at our elementary school that year, but I would call her every night and gush (mostly about high school boys).


Ryan, the topic of many of our conversations, was the first of my many embarrassing junior high crushes. My brothers' friends and the high-school-theatre guys made up the pool of my potential soul-mates. Somehow, at different points in time, I managed to convince myself that each of them was the man with whom I would spend the rest of my life. I cringe when I recall the way I spoke and behaved around them and couldn't possibly write about it in detail.

At the end of seventh grade, I sent Ryan an email, confessing my feelings for him. Now, I kick myself for how seriously I took the situation. When he didn't email back, I was "heartbroken," but I soon became grateful that he never, ever mentioned it.

After I read essays (or any sort of literature) that deal with improving one's writing, I find that my writing either improves slightly for a short period of time or becomes somewhat stilted and stiff. Both results occur because I think more about how I write after reading about it.

Last night, for my English class, I read essays about "the writing process" and "finding the right words." Having said this, I apologize in advance for any pretentious wording or awkward sentence structure.

Today, it is cold and foggy in San Francisco. I know this because I can look out of my dorm room window and see that it is gray out there around the little, familiar skyline on the horizon. Here, however, it is sunny and warm. It isn't summery, but I'm comfortable without a sweater. I wore thong sandals to class today.

I sort of wrote about this last summer, but it can't be said enough. What did I do to deserve to live somewhere like this? People come from all over the world to be in California, and just because my grandparents had the initiative to come here, I get to grow up here.

On a side note, we had an earthquake last week. It was pretty rad. My campus is located right on the Hayward fault, so earthquakes are to be expected. People keep saying The Big One is coming, but they've been saying that for years now.

California seems to have lucked out. There have not been any major natural disasters in a long time... Maybe it's just that I've only been alive for twenty years and have no perspective on the matter.

Grama says there was a tsunami when she was a teenager. That sounds pretty significant.

It's nice to write something rambly for a change.

Ryan the Twin

Ryan was Jason's twin brother. They were blond, athletic kids in the year behind me. I don't know if I ever actually spoke to them - I must have - but I know I was in class with them at some point. I was in a lot of combination classes: first/second, second/third (twice), and third/fourth. I've heard both that it was because we were bright and required less one-on-one attention from the teacher and also that it was because we were a little slow and hearing the same material from the previous year again (even if it wasn't directed at us) helped us to learn. I still don't know which it was. Either way, for most of elementary school, most of my friends were a year younger than me.

Devon and Chris were my best friends in second or third grade. I don't remember. Neither can I remember how or why we were friends; they were both a year younger, and I was a girl. It was weird, and we were accused constantly of "liking" each other.

Chris Keodi was the first person ever to call me on the phone just to chat. Before that, the telephone had been used exclusively for asking friends to come over. I can't imagine what we could have had to talk about.

One time, I discovered that Chris and Devon watched The Simpsons. I watched it too, but the general feeling at our small private school was that The Simpsons was a bad show and that we shouldn't watch it. We three had kept it secret because we were afraid of being reprimanded. I felt like we were comrades or conspirators. I hadn't realized until now what a rebel I was in elementary school.

The three of us liked to play Jurassic Park. Devon's mom had said that he wasn't allowed to play house, so we found alternatives. Chris would be Dr. Grant, and Devon and I would be Tim and Lex. Mostly, we just reenacted the electric fence scene. We'd grab hold of the chain-link fence and shake as if we were being electrocuted. It was fun. Then, we'd go and sit in the corner of the playground, spending the night in the trees where we were protected from the velociraptor.

One time in third grade, at lunch, I kissed Devon on the cheek. I don't know why, and I didn't think about it really. I just kissed him goodbye, and he started screaming. I don't know why I did it. I know I didn't like him like that. I felt like I was kissing my little brother. We were both mortified.

We never spoke of it.

The year after that, Amy came to our school. I could write a whole novel about her and me, and I probably will someday. We used to walk around the playground sharing my red, zip-up sweatshirt, singing the Siamese cat song from Lady and the Tramp. That sweatshirt got really stretched out. I wore it all the way into high school.

Amy was in Ryan and Jason's fourth grade class, and she told me that Jason was nice but that Ryan was the evil twin. I don't know if he really was meaner, but it supported the theory that we developed later, after meaning another twin set which included a twin named Ryan. He also happened to be the meaner twin. According to our theory, twins named Ryan were inherently evil.