Oh, dear.

I started packing yesterday. Technically, I was supposed to start packing on Saturday, but I couldn’t quite face it. I pulled out the vacuum-free bags that make everything airtight and stuffed all my coats and sweatshirts and fluffy shirts into them and then flopped down on top of them to push all the air out. It was an exercise in silliness.

My brother and I have been home alone since Saturday. Our parents went to go work on a house in Vegas, and they were supposed to be home last night. They got too tired, though, so at midnight the house phone rings. I dive for it, praying it didn’t wake my brother, and when I pick it up all I hear is the dial tone. Then my cell phone rings (loudly), and I race back across the room (across the tile, wearing socks and slipping and half-falling all over the place). It’s my mother, of course. They ended up spending the night at some awful-sounding motel called Pete’s Casino, or Pete’s something-or-other. She walks me through how to get my brother ready for school, and then we hang up and I realize I have to be up and out the door in, like, five and a half hours.

Bleh. That said, I don’t know how high schoolers do it. I know I did, once upon a time, but I also seem to remember falling asleep in just about every class except the ones where I had to sit in the front.

This is all an attempt to distract myself from… Saturday. When I leave. Say goodbye to my dad and little brother. Get on a plane and fly to New Jersey. Spend a week with my mother, her brother, and his family. Then get on another plane and fly across the Atlantic.

Oh, goodness. I think it might be time to turn the TV back on. TV’s a good distraction.

Zepplin Zoo

This is adorable. ADORABLE. :)

Four days!

…Until the release of the third installment of the Hunger Games trilogy, of course. :) Mockingjay! I’m so excited I could puke. (That’s probably more due to overeating on my mother’s birthday, though.)

Tomorrow morning (bright and wayyy too early) I’m going surfing with my dad and his buddy. It’ll be my first venture into the water since I attacked a jellyfish (and lost). lol. There’ve been multiple great white shark sightings in the beaches we usually surf at, but I’m not too worried. I’m significantly less worried than I expected to be, actually. It’s not like sharks enjoy the taste of people, after all. And they’re just babies, the ones that are coming so close to shore. Okay, six, seven, and nine foot babies, but still just young’uns.

I also discovered over the past few days that Lili St. Crow’s third book in the Strange Angels series came out at the end of July, so I’m rereading the first two. I’ve already picked up a copy of the third, called “Jealousy,” and it’s sitting on one of my brand-new bookshelves at the moment. :) I always enjoy rereading the first of the series (“Strange Angels”), though I remember vaguely that the second installment (“Betrayals”) left me a little bewildered.

But… eh. Guess I’ll find out in a few days.

Charles de Lint's "The Blue Girl"

** bit of a spoiler alert, though it's not too bad **

I just finished rereading "The Blue Girl" for the first time in about four years (and unfortunately, only during this reading did I realize there are many, many more stories that take place in Newford). My favorite part about the story was Imogene's voice. She's brilliant and quirky and brave and fun, and of course, don't we all wish we were brilliant, quirky, brave and fun?

The adults--the parents, in particular, stood out to me as well. They weren't absentee parents, ...more I just finished rereading Charles de Lint's "The Blue Girl" for the first time in about four years (and unfortunately, only during this reading did I realize there are many, many more stories that take place in Newford). My favorite part about the story was Imogene's voice. She's brilliant and quirky and brave and fun, and of course, don't we all wish we were brilliant, quirky, brave and fun?

The adults--the parents, in particular, stood out to me as well. They weren't absentee parents, as is common in so many other YA books. Maxine's father didn't play much of a role in the story, and Imogene's father didn't at all, but both of their mothers featured relatively prominently. They were minor characters, of course, but what I like to call major-minor characters (as in, they show up and interact with major characters more than other minor characters). Maxine's mother even had her own character arch where she grew and began to recover from her divorce. It was interesting, because both mothers were very clearly supportive characters.

The best part of this story was when Imogene accepts the existence of fairies and realizes she hasn't been dreaming when she sees them. The reader already knew it, Maxine suspected, Christy knew it, Adrian knew it, Tommery knew it--it was totally common knowledge, and all that was left was for Imogene to discover her new reality. When she did, though--that one line ("It wasn't a dream.") was the single most chilling thing I've come across in I don't know how long. It was beautifully done, and it was a stroke of genius on Charles de Lint's part.

It was chilling because bad dreams aren't real. That's what everyone tells themselves, or each other, when we wake up in the middle of the night. "It's okay. It was only a dream. It's over now, it wasn't real. It was only a dream." But to discover that it wasn't just a dream, and that it isn't okay--that's one of the most horrifying things that can happen to someone.

After Imogene comes to that realization, though, the story drops off for a bit. It just isn't as exciting. The pace isn't kept up or anything; they're planning out how to defeat the bad guys and it's just unnecessary word fluff. I honestly got bored enough to think about quitting in the middle of the book, though I'm glad I stuck with it. The climax at the end is worth it.

Colds are yucky.

I’m sick. Blargh. I went up to Santa Barbara to visit school friends before I leave for Scotland for a year and basically more fun than my immune system can handle. Traveling and staying up until six-thirty in the morning and such.

Oh well. It was worth it, and I’m on the mend now, even if my sleep schedule is all wacked out. I got up at about noon today and spent the first two hours of the day writing book reviews for my goodreads.com account. Go ahead and check it all out. :) I don’t… ahem… have any friends yet, but I really love the whole concept. It’s like Facebook for book lovers. You have these things called “shelves,” where you basically categorize books as “read,” “currently reading,” or “to-read,” and you can assign stars for how good a book was and write reviews for books, talk to people that read the same things you do, obsess over pretty cover art (I’m so glad I’m not the only one in the world who does that), follow your favorite authors and what they’re reading, and even join book groups that choose a different book to read each month.

Pretty sweet deal, if you ask me. :)

And speaking of shelves, I have put up three new bookshelves in my bedroom! Okay, so only two are up at the moment and I still have to finish painting the third, but I’m so excited! I love filling up bookshelves almost as much as I love finishing books. =P

Life in the Summer

I’ve had kind of a slew of run-ins with creepy-crawlies recently. Ticks and jellyfish, mostly. And there was a spider in my bedroom yesterday, but I caught him in a jar and threw him outside.

The jellyfish, though, that’s the most exciting story, so I’ll share that one. :) I was surfing with my dad on Monday at La Jolla Shores, breaking in my brand-new wetsuit. It’s a spring suit, so it’s short-sleeved. (Winter suits, like the one my dad has, come down to your wrists and ankles.) We’d been out there for a long time already, almost two hours, when I was paddling back out on my board and managed to slam my hand all the way through a glob of slimy, globby purple stuff. I thought it was seaweed. It was gross, so I yanked my hand back out. After a second, though, my hand and wrist started to tingle, then sting and hurt. A lot—which is when I realized that, duh, seaweed’s not purple, that’s probably a jellyfish.

So I rolled off my board, got out of the water as fast as I could, yelled for my dad to watch my board, and ran off to the lifeguard station. No, they didn’t pee on it. They sprayed rubbing alcohol to disinfect it, and then told me to get back in the water because the salt would help with the swelling.

So I sat on my board in the shallows, bent in half so I could dip my arm in the water. A dinky little wave came in and I flailed and rolled off the side, then reoriented myself. Another dinky little wave came in and I fell off the back.

Yeah, I’m not so good at that sitting-on-the-board thing yet. What can I say? I’m still a beginner.