A Coon’s Age

My Williams grandparents (ie, not the ones I normally talk about here) were from Kentucky and used to say things like, “I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age.” I have been dying to use that phrase on someone for the longest time– not that I intentionally abandoned you! I swear!

So what HAS been going on to keep me away from thee so long, mine readers? I shall fain tell thee. (I have no clue what ‘fain’ means, or even if ’tis a word real. And that last bit sounded more like Yoda than Shakespeare? I digress.)

First of all: Dance. Oh MY. I had a dance camp somewhere in this month (what day is it? huh?) and it was basically 4 days straight, 3 hours each day, with Rebecca as the teacher. She has the sweetest Irish accent, the most kindly demeanor– and she is a slave driver. A very nice one, but still. While the other teacher attempts to bribe me into higher leaps with “pretend Justin Beiber is on the ceiling. Like baby, baby, baby, o-oh!”, Rebecca just says, “better lift, PLEASE” and you do it. She’s amazing, though, and taught me a great hornpipe step and was very helpful and encouraging. Plus, how scary can you be when you say “us” like “oos”? And oh, speaking of dance teacher accents, there is one teacher who is Scottish and no one, absolutely no one, can understand what he’s saying. He was teaching the younger kids a ceili dance called High Caul Cap, and we could hear him calling out, “Get all ghetto!” (Translation: “Grab your girl!”)

 Also, Writer’s Conference!!!!! For the past two weeks it’s been all about finally wrangling everything together for the conference, which took place today. And it went great. Huge sigh of relief/contentment. Just the right amount of people showed up, the speakers were great (especially the ones I found, cough cough) and I left feeling inspired and a little bit starry-eyed because I met real authors. But they’re not like Cinda Williams Chima, where it’s like their success was so big that it seems unattainable for me. I looked at these authors I met today and I thought: that could be me. Not a titan of the literary world, but still successful and with a career in Writing Books. I mean, I’m all for being a titan, but it’s nice to see that you don’t need to be you-know-who (not Voldemort, but his creator) to have a writing career.

Oh, what else? Yes, the garden of course, but that is another post. So is my experience with a certain movie, a certain new book (I feel slightly guilty that I am getting so much enjoyment out of Borders closing, but hey, lemons into greatly discounted Penguin Classics lemonade), etc and so I think I shall say good night for now.

On the morrow we shall converse further! Oh, that which we call a wookie by another name, would smell as– never mind.

~Pen

PS: I keep having this weird hallucination that my phone is ringing. All day, I swear I kept hearing “yeeeeeeaaaaaahhh, oh-oh-oh-woahwoahwoah-oh-oh” even though I knew it was on vibrate. Have I gone mad?
PPS: A shadow moved and I thought it was a mouse. Someone please force me to go to sleep now.
PPPS: “force” pun not intended.
PPPPS: because it was a pretty crappy pun.
PPPPPS: that is all.

 

“There’s a lot of people out there who want to be snobs.”

Guess what? Guess what? Guess guess guess!!!
Fine. Be that way, then.
I suppose I will just have to tell you.

Our dance studio finally got a new floor!!!!! YAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!!!!! No more dancing in a mine field!! No more looking furtively down lest you fall into an abysmal hole!! No more loose-tooth dots from where they put in (unhelpful) insulation!! No more duct-taping after banging in loose floorboards! And no more Ankle-Sprain Hill!!! 
Plus they split the classes, so I am now in a much smaller one and enjoying it immensely.

Also, yesterday  my new quilt came!! I got a new quilt for my bed, and it’s blue and white and I like it a lot. Slowly I’ve been trying to make my room reflect my actual age rather than a mix of my previous ones. I took down my canopy at long last, and Dad was all, “Oh, no more bug net?” in a disappointed voice. Yeah. Definitely no more bug net. 
Now if only I could finally finish cleaning the stupid room, which is never going to happen so why talk about it anyway, right? Right.

People are currently whining upstairs…
And it’s not even a school day. Whatever could be the matter?

My 3 hours of writing time continues to be a boon to my life. But yesterday was horrible because I had the worst case of writer’s block that I’ve ever had. Luckily it will be soothed if not ended on Saturday… Writer’s group For the WIN! Oh, I’m going to drive there myself. With Mom (stupid temps) but still. Parkway here I come, at a time in the morning which I am usually not yet fully awake!! Fear not, I hop out of bed on writer’s group days. [I like mornings. Just, sometimes my morning is someone else's afternoon.]

Yesterday I played with Poncho out in the front yard. He was begging people to play with him, and Mom was giving me the Look, so I went. Poncho explained that we were going to play something akin to football, except it was called Disk of Power. We played for a bit, and subsequently the Disk of Power hit me in the eye. Poor Poncho was quite dismayed. Plus he didn’t want the game to end. By the time I was done putting ice on my eye, he said,
“Now it’s too dark to play more.”
Me: “So, we can play tomorrow.”
Poncho: “What if it rains tomorrow?”
Me: ”Then we’ll play the next day.”
Poncho: “What if it’s really cold the next day?”
Me: “Then we’ll put on extra sweaters.”
Poncho: “What if we can’t find extra sweaters?”
Then he started to cry.
Poor kid.
I assured him that I knew where all the extra sweaters are in the house, and that seemed to help.
I felt like Old Father William.

I have answered three questions, and that is enough/said his father, don’t give yourself airs!/ Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?/ Now be off, or I’ll kick you downstairs!

Except I would never kick Poncho down the stairs. It hurts. I have fallen down them numerous times.

Love,
Pen

PS the title quote is from a beekeeping meeting a few days ago… Ha, so true, right?
PPS I told you I’d put it in somehow, Mom.

 

Wooooooo!

Awesome day today! We Indians learned our first dance at rehearsal today, and it is great! Everyone’s really nice and it’s pretty funny to watch the teacher lady do all the dances. So yeah. And I’m going bac k tomorrow, and the day after that, so YAY!!!! You would think it’d seem like a drag but I guess not for me. Except I have to be late tomorrow becuase of stupid dance! Grrr! Irish dance: I love it but it’s been driving me insane since our old teacher left and I have this new teacher. AND there is absolutely NO HEAT in this place, it’s above a restaraunt/bar thingy, and there’s heat in that place but none ion the upstaris rooms and it’s FREEZING!!! There’s space heaters but they don’t really help and this year we’re doing less actual hard work with lots of dancing and moving, it’s soooo slow, so I don’t even work up a sweat and yet my muscles still plague me if I don’t stretch. Go figure. Anyway, maybe I’ll convince my mom to let me leave early or something, even though it’s sort of a drive from dance to the high school, but I’m going to get no sleep at all tonight becuase I forgot to tell the teacher lady that I would be late, so I’m worried she’ll do all the important stuff before I even get there & then I’ll be lost and I’ll just go CRAZY!!! (Oooooh, I like using caps today, watcha gonna do about it?)

But anyway, enough complaining. I’m HAPPY cuz it’s going to be an awesome show, I just know it! nd it’s so much fun…. ah. The world is OK again.

 

My Favorite Things

My favorite color is yellow. I like to memorize nonsense poetry, like from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and The Hunting of the Snark. The ‘Alice’ books are in my top favorite books, which is saying a lot since I read constantly. I also like fairies, but not Tinkerbell. At least not the one from the Disney movies. I guess the one in the book (it’s one of my favorites too) is okay. I like The Wind in the Willows, the movie, even though there’s no really good girl characters in it. I like my room. I like lemons. And yellow punchbuggy convertibles. I like horses and guinea pigs and spiders and blackbirds and owls and wolves and bears– but not grizzlies. I like staying up late. I like to talk. I like to hang out with my friends. I like to talk in a British accent and make up radio shows. I like being homeschooled even though this is my first year of it. I like reading and writing and stories. I like camping and big fires and chocolate and stars. I like woods and exploring and fallen logs and stuff like that to climb on. I like my family. I like the fort in our backyard. I like trees. I like the whole wide world. I like Italy and learning foreign languages. I like odd, strange, cool, interesting, and long words: take antidisestablishmentarianism, tintinnabulation, and just words that sound cool like ‘aloof” for example. I like playing Dutch Cards with my friend Miss Prez. I like sleepover and all-nighters. I like movies. I like The Thief Lord (a LOT, book and movie, but book the most.) I like being Catholic. I like St. George. I like Irish dance. I like playing the flute. I hope I’ll like being in a play (my first rehearsal ever is tomorrow, I’m an Indian in Peter Pan). I like to ramble on about nothing in particular. I like music, usually old stuff or stuff no one else really listens to, like Leeland and Sanctus Real and Rush and Spirit and ‘The Night Chicago Died’. I like making up dances to songs (once again, ‘The Night Chicago Died’). I like… a lot of things. Old fashioned things. New things. The whole entire universe. I’m easily amused and easily pleased, but I don’t give up easily on things I’m trying to do or get or find or catch.  

That’s most everything, I think. So now you know….. don’t you feel absolutely enlightened now?