Hit, Miss, Sunk

Poncho: “I called F-7 and his boat was there and there so he should have said sunk, right?”
Me: “Um, yeah…”
Dad: “I don’t think you called F-7.”
Poncho: “I did! I called C-7 and D-7 and E-7 and F-7.”
Me: “Okaaay…”
Poncho: “So, Dad didn’t say sunk, which makes it a crime of war–”
Me: “A crime of war?!”
Dad: “I didn’t cheat.” 
Poncho: “So I should have won, right?”
Me: “Sure. Right.”

Apparently Poncho takes Battleship very seriously. Actually, it wasn’t really Battleship, because he made up a different version of the game that includes torpedoes and double-fire and who knows what else. Grandpa had a hard enough time trying to play regular Battleship the other day, because he thought it was possible to retreat and move the ships around. (“Whale!”)

Speaking of games, I played Fruit Ninja for the first time yesterday morning. And I do not understand the point of that game at all. Why must you slice the fruit? What happens if you don’t (besides losing)? Why are there bombs? At least with Angry Birds there’s incentive to smash the pigs because they laugh at you when you miss horribly (I’m not very adept at touch screens, okay! Or catapults…). Angry Birds is the story of determined little creatures fighting against smug green pigs. Fruit Ninja is… slicing fruit. There is no meaning!

Aaaaand I expect a story/meaning from an app.

Well, that’s what happens to a person when they don’t actually own any app-ified products (just play them once in a blue moon on someone else’s) and spend their time reading.

Or, also. Knitting a sock. (That’s right, I’m actually Miss Marple in disguise. That explains my old-lady habits. Well, I did solve the Bethesda Printer Mystery! I will never forget that shining moment of my life. Just saying.) And on Monday, Eliza made salt dough and we all stamped things in it, to make pendants and buttons and such. Rachel said, “Well, we’re officially ready for the apocalypse. We’ll have warm socks and wear salt dough jewelry.”
Because we definitely have to plan for jewelry. Gotta look fabulous while stirring up the squirrel gut stew…

Till the battle ships,
Pen

 

helter-skelter in a summer swelter

It’s the hottest summer since I’ve been alive (true fact, my friends). So hot I’ve wished desperately for air conditioning. (Gasp!) We spent a whole day at the library, at the DHFs’ house, at Grandma Vegas’ house, and in front of fans. The only time it’s been semi bearable has been the past few days in the morning and evening. Around 2pm the heat is too much but then outside it cools down around 6:30. I’ve been out weeding, staking tomatoes, and trying to tame the wild bean vines that the catalogue said would “not require trellising”. That was a total big fat lie, because they did need trellising, and even the trellis wasn’t enough; they spilled over and got tangled around eggplants and our neighbors’ rose bushes. The cukes refused to climb the trellis despite my best efforts (it may have been due to the fact that it’s a very crappy trellis, for squash anyways) and are crawling steadily out from their section into the rest of the garden. Oh well. At least I see a lot of bees, and TONS of spiders.

Which reminds me…

While at a baseball game last week, we were sitting in the nosebleeds under the awning (but it was raining so HA HA LOSAHS WITH CLOSER SEATS!) and in the middle of the fifth inning, a gigantic spider fell out of nowhere onto my lap. I cupped it in my hands, but it crawled out and up my arm where it perched for a while, and then it climbed over my shoulder and disappeared. It was like a bigger version of the little pale spiders that are always in our house.

Anyway… Now Dad is looking for the remote, talking to himself…
“Let’s see under here…  Augh! Eww! Ew– Hey, money.”
Now he’s found it, and he’s dancing around with it, talking in an annoying girly voice…
“oooh, wah, wah, I can’t find the remote, I looked everywhere, oooo–” (normal voice) ”You were sitting on it!”

I think the heat may be getting to him.

Well, to take my mind off the heat, I’ve been making a winter hat (well, it’s a fall and spring hat, too– and very cute and almost done, I might add!). Also reading informational books and watching a lot of movies… Sadly, almost all the movies I’ve watched lately, I’ve sort of hated the end. Mom and I have been having a Tom-Hanks-movie-not-marathon, which means we borrowed every Tom Hanks movie from the library (that was kind of awkward checking out… The librarian looked at me weird, and I just shrugged, like, it’s my mom’s obsession, I just go along with it) and have been watching them whenever we can. We watched The Terminal, which was allegedly a romantic comedy but they could have taken the girl out of the movie, she was pretty irrelevant to the plot. Then we watched… oh drat, what was it? Well, I can’t remember. We watched You’ve Got Mail, which was my favorite, but I thought the ending was cheesy and dumb and she should have just fallen in love with the guy even though he was the same guy anyway, but it was kind of a huge rip-off in terms of character development and storyline. I mean it was a happy ending, but not as good as it could have been if they did it my way. Obviously, I should write movies too now. (That was sarcasm– I would fail horribly at script writing.)   

Plus I’ve been getting ready for the county fair (woot? maybe?), practicing dance and flute, and working on Within a Dream (Dodge is my peer review/guinea pig, and extremely helpful– he even gave me an idea for the next chapter! Which I want to finish before Saturday…), my life really does seem helter-skelter. And I don’t much like it. I think this has been my least favorite summer so far, despite its fun moments. There were even a few weeks where I stopped composting because life was seriously that depressing (and I might have passed out from heat stroke on my way to the backyard).

Dear God: Can we, like, skip August, and have two Octobers instead? Thanks.

Love,
Pen

 

Garden Update

All the peas in my garden sprouted! Yay! Now I’m waiting rather impatiently for my Aztec beans to come up… I got out there and stare at the dirt muttering, “Please sprout, please sprout, please, please sprout.” So maybe that was accidentally interpreted as “peas sprout”?

The lettuce is coming up like crazy, too. (“Lettuce pray” as Dad says every time someone mentions it.) I think I may have actually squealed with delight when I first saw the little sprouts… Hard to believe I could be this excited about lettuce, of all things. I guess it just seems so random; one day you’re throwing seeds on some semi-cruddy soil, the next you’ve got dozens of miniature plants looking up at you. Plants that need watered… All I have is a plastic, kid-size watering can that’s been lying in our yard for the better part of a decade. But oh well. I work with what I got.

My seedlings are currently in intense hardening-off bootcamp. Well, bootcamp run by a kindergarten teacher, since I dashed out there to water the ones that were wilting in the heat yesterday. Soon, they’ll be on their own…

I’m getting kind of garden-hyper (like I wasn’t before, right?) and I want to be out there all the livelong day.
Alas, I get too hot really quickly, and have to come inside for water and hair scrunchies. Or I take a break and practice flute on my front porch. Currently I most like to play “Geese in the Bog”, “Blackthorn Stick”, and “Old Favorite”. And “Rights of Man”, which is Daisy’s favorite as well. She sings rather loudly and sounds like a wolf of yore. Kind of scary, until you look down and see her wearing a big yellow bow around her neck, her dainty paws crossed quite lady-like.

Tis all…

~Pen

 

a list, sort of

I am semi-ill today, meaning not enough to barf up a lung, but enough that after I awoke in the middle of the night (read: 5 am) I did not go back to sleep and instead lay on my back reading some angsty novel for the second time. A side note, it didn’t seem so angsty the first time I read it. But this time it was like, whoa, rein it in a little there. Maybe because I’m getting past my angst stage and moving into the mid-life crisis stage. (I’m going to have one of those early and get it over with.) What was good about reading the book was that I actually gasped aloud (I do that a lot, actually, the other day I dropped a fork and I gasped and Dad heard me in the other room and thought I cut off my finger or something) at one of the main revelations, which had somehow slipped my mind.

Anyway, since I am ill, I shall blog. It’s my thing-to-do-when-ill, apparently. I know it has been such a long time, my friends, alas. However I shall not neglect you any further. So… I think I shall list the things that have happened while I was ‘away’:

1. My room has become an indoor farm. I have the whole setup. Grow lights, heat mat, little newspaper pots full of adorably cute seedlings. Which I took pictures of, and was meaning to attach to this post, but I can’t be bothered to get out of bed and upload them. So, some other day. Right now I’m growing parsley (which just started to get its first set of true leaves– aww! The babies grow up so fast!), eggplant, lemon balm, and tomato. It sounds strange, but the seedlings are the cutest things ever. They look so eager, reaching up with two leaves splayed out to catch the light. I’m becoming very attached to them.

2. Dad took Poncho, Dodge, and me shed hunting. Sheds are very elusive. And quiet. And camoflauged. Because they are, in fact, deer antlers that the bucks shed in the early spring. We went to the cemetery, where Dad was positive there are/were at least 4 antlers lying around from the Twins, and we stalked around in the woods at the edge of the cemetery property. I had fun collecting random possibly edible things that were growing, but I got a little creeped out as well because there were lots of abandoned hobo encampments back there. Plywood, bricks, tarps, old tires, ropes… and I was waiting for some scraggy guy with a beard to leap out at us or something. Which, thankfully, did not happen. We found no sheds but we did find a) deer-related things such as tracks and poo; b) a dead and partially decomposed squirrel; c) a hawk’s wing (sad!!!) Then for a while we walked around the cemetery, hoping maybe we’d find the sheds there, but we didn’t. We looked at the groundhog holes and we cleared off the sunken headstones of some veterans. And we heard a hawk shriek. It sounded exactly like the hawk sound-effect that is so ubiquitous on Dr Quinn (“ka-kwa, ka-kwa”, as the boys say). And in Mulan, the evil hawk thing does that screech. I so did not think hawks sounded like that in real life but they do, apparently.

3. My Irish dance life got majorly messed up.
Let’s just leave it at that. Otherwise I’ll babble and rant for hours and none of it will make any sense to you non-Irish-dancing people.
However, I did get to do one awesome thing, which was perform for two ESL (English as a second language) classes. One class was actually on St Patrick’s day, and it was awesome, because not only did one lady (I wish I’d gotten her name) get really into it and sit in the front row and hug me afterward, I finally met Melkamayehu! And she is even cooler in person.

4. I’m getting all rabid and weird and crazy due to a combination of inter-related factors such as no good new books, too much internet, et cetera. I have made up my mind that I shall duly finish the first draft of my novel as soon as possible– no, not definite eough– by the end of the summer– too soon?–   Well, sometime rather soon because I feel ike my life is becoming a race. I’m in 10th grade, which is fast fading, and it’s like I have two more years until the floor will drop out from under me and I’ll have to support myself, I suppose. Not that the day I turn 18 my parents are kicking me out, but I’m not going to college, and thus I can’t really afford to be a “writer” with nothing to show for it once I graduate high school. I’m a failure of a teenager at everything else (driving = I hate it and have no desire to ever do it again in my life; getting a job = I don’t want to hand over control of my schedule/time/life in exchange for money), so I have to at least make some sort of progress in relation to my future.
Pressure. I actually work well under pressure so maybe this is good for me, after all. But at the same time I sort of wish that I had a completely pressure-free existence. or at least, that I lived by measureable pressures, survival pressures. Like, food and water and shelter. That sort of thing. You can bring in baskets of tomatoes or peaches or beans or whatever and go, yeah, that’s going to be enough food, or you can say no, it’s not. And then you can act by it. But with pressures about the future and whatnot, how am I supposed to do anything about them? I can’t peer into my life 3 years from now and see if what I’m doing and what I have will be enough or not. I can’t be sure about anything.

Well… that is all for now, I suppose. I guess that last one was a glimpse into what I said earlier, about having the midlife crisis early on. Getting it out of my system. Hopefully.

Peace,
Pen

 

“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.

 

I just saw a cool spider. random. as is this post.

So, I feel like posting, and I would post about GS camp and how hilarious Val is etcetera, but I don’t really feel up to it right now. Meh. I will say a few short things about it, though, namely that Val and I made a very funny rendition of “Oh My My My” that my mother may put up on Youtube, and also me, Val, April and Mandy did some kind of dance to this song about California and Val was the rapper dude and her breakdance was just… priceless.
Also, we were all having one of those late-night conversations where everything is really sincere and honest and philosophical, and they had some good thoughts…. Mandy said, “I don’t want to be called hot or cute. I want beautiful.” So then we talked about why beautiful has so much more meaning behind it, and how the others are really just one thing– hot is just describing your looks or your body, cute is just describing some kind of mannerism or maybe the way you do your hair. But beautiful encompasses your whole person, the way you look and act and talk and walk, your personality and just really your core being. Beautiful is just a lot more of a loaded word, one that actually means something when you’re called it.

Well, that seemed all profound at the time, but now that I write it out it seems like something they would put in a cheesy girl-power book. Blehhhh.

In other news, my tomatoes are finally turning red, now like five a day turn and my grandma picks them for me. I am about to get the last of my onions. My humongous sunflowers (they are too big to be called huge, so I had to use humongous… Ginormous would work too) have heads as big as mine which are too heavy for the stalks, so now they lean over and I feel a little sad about that, but oh well. I want to collect the seeds, or dry the heads and hang them up. That sounded creepy, about hanging up heads, but in my mind I’m thinking “oooooo pretty flower for my bedroom”, not Adderhead Fencing Co. (That was a reference only I would get… sigh. I hate that no one understands what I’m talking about. It makes me feel so alone… *overdramatic angst face*)

While on the subject of references only I would get, I have trimmed off the shoots that our tree was growing around its base. Dad thinks it is dying because it was not planted correctly/deep enough, and every time he says that I say, “it keeps ‘smoldering at the roots/and sending up new shoots’”. But anyway I cut the shoots and am hoping to weave a basket out of them, since they are quite flexible. Tomorrow I will get started on that. Also I am wondering if I can make ink from these beautiful berries currently ripening on “the mystery weed” beside our porch. My wonderful mother allowed me to let the weed grow and mature so that I could study it, and I have concluded that it is pokeweed, a plant that is mostly poisonous but certain parts can be eaten a certain way. The berries are numerous and ripen to this rich, dark purple/indigo, but when you squeeze the juice out, the juice is this luminous purple that stains your hands and I think would be some awesome ink, and really cool dye for clothes. Yeah, I pretty much feel like living like a prairie girl… In fact, Erin said this weekend: “I think out of all of us, Pen would survive the longest in Amish Country”. I would but eventually I’d miss some stuff, like showers and computers and musical instruments. I would love making things though, as you can tell.

Also I would like to learn how to make and shoot a slingshot. It is my one regret in life that I never did that as a child. (I know I’m still young but I’m not a child. And I’m not being pretentious when I say that. I read YA, I am a YA. End of debate.) And arrows. I want to make arrows. I know how to shoot them (thanks Dad), but I want to know how to make them. I am also thinking of going squirrell hunting with Dad this year… I think hunting is pretty important, so I want to try it out.

I guess I’m getting in a big learning mood because it’s nearing back-to-school… Wait. I liked that one commercial that says: “It’s not back to school. It’s forward to what’s next.” That’s how I prefer it, and the way it really is with my schooling. I always feel like I’m learning new stuff and not just reviewing lame crap. But I think that was a cell phone commercial so whatever. I do not want a cell phone. I will have to get one when I drive alone, though, so I am getting the most minimal one possible and not letting anyone call me on it since it’ll be for emergencies only. Also I am thinking of not owning a microwave when I’m older since microwave food often grosses me out. But we shall see.

I’m reading a new book called American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of the Perfect Tree about the chestnut blight. Veeery interesting. I suppose people other than me might find it boring but I am just absorbed by it. Chestnuts are my dad’s favorite trees and he’d told me about the blight before, so I was excited to find the book…  Then I must finish Lilith, too! great book (thanks, Eliza!).

I feel like I’m just going on and on. Also, I want tea.

Good night.

Yours till the dog-tooth violets bite,
Pen

PS: “It’s hard to leave the girl you love/ when your heart is full of hope/ But it’s harder still to find the towel/ when your eyes are full of soap.” I love my autograph book. It’s such an unexpected treasure.

 

a random post interlaced with exclamation points and gloomy poetry

Well. (You know, once someone pointed out to me that every time I launch into a long story/anecdote/explanation, I begin with “well”. Odd habit I suppose.)

 The rain has gone away for now, and I’ve been enjoying frequent bike rides. I thought it would be a good idea, like to build up endurance and flexibility for dance, but despite my best efforts, after two days of dance classes my hamstrings are shot. And my toes are practically sprained from toestands. I guess I have to go barefoot/moccasins till they heal. Oh the pain! The agony! ;)

Dad finally threw away the old awnings that’ve been sitting behind our garage since John Adams was president, so I cleared out that area for my compost heap. So much trash and small trees and disgusting bugs back there. But it was worth it, because now my compost is all nicely fenced in (with the garbage-picked fence) and raring to go. Grandma Vegas thinks compost is gross. I think it’s cool. My mom thinks nothing of it as long as she doesn’t have to look at it. Today someone told me that in Canada, you have to compost your stuff, and they give you convenient little bins (with plastic that is actually biodegradable) and then they pick it up once a week, and trash only every other week. See, people? I told you I would love Canada! Speaking of cool places, watch this.

And then  of course there’s my spinach that is still abundant and tasty, and tomorrow will be my first radish harvest!! I’m excited that my garden is turning out so well this first year. Also, my acorn squash has suddenly grown huge golden flowers that will open any day now. Acorn squash recipies, here I come!

Then of course I got two new library books (Sisters Grimm Book 8, finally!!!), watched Miss Marple (“A Pocket Full of Rye”), ate cake, learned how to do laundry, and basically had a pretty good time.

Except I really, really wish I could get outside more. Unfortunately, with Mom working, I’m stuck indoors or in the backyard until one or more of my parents comes home. But I did get paid for some extra babysitting I did, which was kind of a happy surprise, because I’m not broke anymore! Woo! And tomorrow we are going to see Toy Story 3, in 2-D (super ultra XD 3D Googly-Eyes or whatever its called makes Mom ill), don’t know if I will like this movie or not, but w/e. We shall see.

I just realized that I have been using way too many exclamtion points. Have I gone mad? (“I’m afraid so. Completely bonkers.” Guess what movie I’ve watched four times already?) 

(OHMYSTARSPLEASEDONTSHOOTME gosh Dodge’s new Nerf gun is loud and, um, shooty? Shooty is the only way I can describe it with only part of my brain working properly. Why must my peace and quiet be so disturbed?? “Hearken thee, ere voice of dread/with bitter tidings laden…” springs to mind every time Dodge says, “Hey, me and Poncho are gonna have a dart war”).

On that note…

“…and summon to unwelcome bed/a melancholy maiden/we are but older children dear/who fret to find our bedtimes near.”  And mine is near, but it’s my literal bedtime, I promise!

Crud. Another exclamation point. I must be hyper from too much cake.

Yours till the horse flies,
Pen

 

we put on our winter skin

our winter skin, and walk…

And we watch the snow fall.

Because it is falling, very much so, all over the country I hear. Some global warming. I do like snow, and I do so love winter and its mysterious, grey, see-your-breath, clear night skies atmosphere, but I’m not gonna lie to you. I’m getting kind of sick of this. I think it’s not so much the constant cold or the bad driving conditions or the fact that I am continually forced to wear jeans and shoes (my two pet peeves clothing-wise… if it were up to me I would always wear skirts and walk barefoot), but it’s really just that I can’t do anything in the winter. I am an outside kind of person, and if I can’t get outside I pace and act like a marsh wiggle. In any other season this is easily remedied; even in the rain I can walk the dogs around the block, or hang out in our backyard fort. But with six feet of snow on the sidewalk and sub-zero temperatures, it’s such a hassle to get outside. The closest thing to the outdoors I get is playing Island Cycling on the Wii Fit. What is the world coming to?!? 

Anyway. There’s other stuff going on in the world besides the dumb weather. I must be getting old or something, starting a conversation in that manner.

Well, Dad is very close to the end of Catching Fire. He didn’t read it for a while because of all the camps and stuff, but I think he’ll be done by next week. I read that book in five hours, btw, but I’m still impressed with how quickly Dad has chewed through these despite the numerous “girly” parts in Catching Fire. I knew he would like book one because it has a lot of survival, hunting, action, etc. But he seems to like book two as well. Yay! :D

When I was reading Catching Fire, in the part where *spioler alert* President Snow comes to “chat” with Katniss, I had a small freakout moment and almost stopped reading. Why? Because through that whole part she keeps mentioning how President Snow is really creepy and kind of disgusting and also very strong-smelling. He wears a rose in his lapel that is genetically enhanced to smell very strongly. But Katniss also thinks she smells the distinct scent of blood coming off of him, but she’s not sure where it’s coming from, him or the weird rose. Then when he says goodbye, it says: The smell of blood… it was on his breath.
The second I read that I looked up from my book and shrieked, “PRESIDENT SNOW IS A VAMPIRE?”
Everyone in my family immediately come running to my aid saying, “Huh? What? What happened, are you okay? Why are you jumping in circles making angry faces like that?”
Luckily, all the blood/breath stuff was just for added creepiness. Like we needed any more of that when Snow is basically killing people off left and right without even breaking a sweat, threatening to have Gale die in an accidentally-on-purpose mine explosion and have Prim sent off to the Games, and then in the next breath thanking Katniss’ mother for the tea and cookies. 
Vampires suck.
(I just read that over and realized that it’s a pun. LOL. XD )

And… what else is going on around here? I watched a great episode of Frontline all about technology, and you can watch it here: www.pbs.org . It was really good, a bit long, but nonetheless I found it pretty interesting since it fits in with all my thoughts on the world in this wired age. Maybe one of my upcoming posts will be about technology, and my generation, etc…. but maybe not. I feel too lazy to do that right now. Ugh. See, it’s getting me, too!!!

I think that’s all I’ll say for now, since I don’t want to get too disorganized in this poor little posty. ;) Next time, I will try to be a little less all over the place, and to talk more in depth. We need to talk, you and I. About a great many things. (A little Palpatine there, just for good measure. Uh, not that the Emperor would really be considered “good” measure. oh phooey. I need to log off before I keep running my mouth and become completely irrelevant.)

Peace out,
Pen