Weddings and Thoughts I Probably Shouldn’t Have

The other night my dad told me I was his until he gave me away (he was referring to my wedding).

Psh, I thought, I haven’t been daddy’s little girl since August 1, 2009.

That rather surprised me–that I could come up with such a specific date. But I quickly realized it was true. When I tuned back into what Dad was saying, this is what I heard.

“I’m looking forward to seeing who you pick. He’d better not be a doofus!”

That, my friends, is Fahey humor. It isn’t very funny.

Anyway, I went to bed thinking this:

Good thing he’s not a doofus. Otherwise there would be no hope, and I would be depressed. At least this way there’s a chance.

And that is my own wry humor. It isn’t very funny either.

What can I say? I’m a Fahey.

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But hopefully not forever…

Heffalumps, Birthdays, and Cold Medicine

Yes, the title is three seemingly random things. Yes, those things are somehow related. Let me explain those things in the order they appear.

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First, Heffalumps. Has anyone seen the original Many Adventures of  Winnie the Pooh? If not, shame on you; go watch it all on YouTube.

Well, recently (last time I was sick, actually–I’ll get to that later) I was reading K. A. Applegate’s Remnants.

I would like to take a second to rant about this before I get back to Heffalumps and Winnie-the-Pooh. If you don’t want to read the rant, skip everything in italics.

K. A. Applegate is a seriously messed-up lady. I started the Everworld series, and got bored halfway through the first book. Before I got bored, I was slightly disturbed. Remnants is really freaky and creepy and nightmare-inducing, which I will get to in a minute. Even her famous Animorphs series is slightly creepy and horrible. Her books seriously frighten me. She is screwed-up, in my opinion.

All right, with the rant over, let’s get back to the story. I was reading Remnants before bed, and suddenly realized that if that was the last thing I read, I’d have fever dreams plus horror-show nightmares, which is an equation I didn’t care to solve. So I found Mom and told her that Applegate is messed up, and about the equation. She told me to find something with puppies in it.

I found Winnie the Pooh, which lacks but is better than puppies. After reading the first page, I fell in love again. After about half of the giant book we have, I realized I want to watch the movie. I still haven’t, but whatever.

Due to the cold medicine I’ll get to later, I randomly started humming the Heffalumps and Woozles song in the kitchen today. Then I had to ask Mom how the lyrics go, and of course she remembered almost the entire song. So I went to YouTube and found the movie segment.

Oddly enough, that never frightened me. All the commenters, as you can see, are horrified and freaked out (and make jokes about Pooh on drugs, that hurt me inside). But more oddly still, Pink Elephants on Parade, from Dumbo, scared the heck out of me for years.

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Today is my Aunt Stephanie’s birthday. I refuse to tell you how old she is, because she probably doesn’t want anybody to know. She isn’t, however, that much older than I am.

She bought the entire Disney Store the other day.

She didn’t really, but she did buy (I think) twenty 12″ dolls (all the princesses from Snow White to Tangled and all the princes–because she really didn’t want the princesses to be lonely, no joke) and all the available extra outfits. She’s adorable.

She also told Mom that I should come over to her house sometime and play with them with her, even though I’m much too old to play with dolls. I was absurdly excited by this. We will also be watching Winnie the Pooh movies, if I can convince her of that. It shouldn’t be too hard, she loves him too.

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I am coming down with my obligatory Winter Holiday Illness, and I hate it as always.

See, every winter around some holiday, I come down with something, usually a cold. Last year it was New Years. That was annoying because Steph was getting married, and I was spending a lot of time thinking about/talking to one of my extraordinarily amazing friends (how I managed to not realize how cool he is for four years I’m still not sure), and there was a lot of delicious food. And there I was, sniffling and coughing and feeling like a frog had set up housekeeping in my throat. It was not fun.

This year I started getting the cold after Thanksgiving, which is considerably better than before Thanksgiving, but still awfully annoying.

Needless to say, I’m getting quite sick of this pattern. (Pun intended, sorry.)

What makes it worse is that I’m supposed to go to the Teen Classic Movie tonight (to see the same amazing friend, too) and watch 12 Angry Men. I do not wish to do this while I’m coming down with a cold, but I have no choice. I refuse to stay home, so I’ll chance passing on my illness.

The amusing thing about all this is I’m on four types of cold medicine (tonight it’ll be five), and am therefore bouncing-off-the-walls hyper. It’s actually kind of fun. I’m giggly, bouncy, cuddly, amused by pretty much anything, and making a complete fool of myself without caring.

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So that’s my ramblings. Hope you enjoyed. See ya later.

I Actually Won Today

I did it, I did it, I did it, I did it.

I won NaNoWriMo. YAY!

I knew I had 270 words left to write after the laptop ran out of battery in the car yesterday. However, I realized after writing for a bit today that I didn’t know how much I had left to do. So I decided to copy all the text into the Word Count Validator, and check. When I finished copying the text from all eleven documents, I took a second to copy the whole thing into Notepad so I could validate my word count easier when I had enough to win.

Well I hit submit, and what comes up?

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YOU WIN!

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I kind of stared for a second, and then looked up at the little current-word-count box, and it said 11,920.

My goal was 11,919.

I won by ONE WORD. I AM SO AWESOME.

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I think I’m going to school now. If I can concentrate after the giant accomplishment I just made.

The Weirdest Things Make Me Homesick

I’m in Chicago, occupying a tiny corner of my Aunt Joanna’s huge house. I can hear my cousin Jacob (eleven months old) yelling briefly before someone pays attention to him.

He’s an adorable kid. His parents are my uncle Bob and his wife Jen, here to prepare food for the masses. Earlier today I was holding Jacob and feeding him cantaloupe to keep him quiet and happy because Jen was making stuffing. He likes me now, probably because I had the delicious melon.

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Last night we got back from dinner at my dad’s parents’ house (Chinese takeout). It was ten o’clock at night, and Bob was trying to tune Joanna’s bass guitar. Apparently her son Billy (William Bradford, just like his dad) hadn’t wanted anybody to tune it, so he strung a rubber band through the tuning pegs.

We think that’s probably why one of the strings snapped. Either that, or the fact that the strings had never been changed.

I was lying on one couch, and Bob was sitting on the other, quietly playing the three-stringed bass, trying to figure out what the markings were and just enjoying hitting random notes.

Suddenly I was incredibly homesick.

I never get homesick.

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A MercyMe song says, “If home is where the heart is then I’m out-of-place.”

That pretty much sums up my feelings on life right now.

My heart is happily at home. I’m not there.

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Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

The Faheys (Grandma, Grandpa, Dad, Mom, Thomas, Matthew, Bob, Jen, Jacob, me), Bradfords (Bill, Joanna, Billy), and Roenspies (Uh…there quite a few) are piling into the house, and it’s about to get crazy and full of bad jokes.

I probably will watch the kids. First cousins three-year-old Billy and eleven-month-old Jacob, and second cousin 21-month-old Ian. They’re all great kids. Besides, they’re family. And I really do love my family.

I’d better go; I think I hear Uncle Dave (actually Great-Uncle Dave, but we don’t call him that). I need to prepare for the awkwardness.

Wish me luck.

I Feel Like I Should Care More

I left my ring sitting on the edge of the bathtub back at my house. Yeah, that one. The one that “every time I see it, it gets a little more destroyed!”

I’m miles away now, a couple states over. I won’t be wearing it for an entire week.

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The only thing I’m missing is the physical presence of a ring on my finger.

The only thing I think about when I notice it’s not there is that when I turn sixteen, I can get my opal ring expanded.

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All the symbolism here is long gone. This doesn’t bother me as much as I think it should.

What Else Do You Call A Teenage Volunteer?

So I volunteer at a library in the next city over, because the libraries in my city suck and don’t have volunteer programs (well…the one has a really lame “adopt a shelf” program, and the other is so under-staffed that it’s closed half the time).

But anyway, I’ve been working there since the summer I went into seventh grade. That’s four summers, by the way. I’ve been working school-years since the year I went into eighth (seventh-graders aren’t allowed to work school-years). This school-year is my third.

The only two jobs I have ever done are Information Desk work, and various things in the Children’s area.

Information Desk is boring, because they always send me over to the Circulation Desk to do the stupid pull list and fetch all the books that are on hold. It’s a stupid pointless job that they wouldn’t have to have if they would just change their computer system to flag books on the way in instead of the way out. But whatever.

I adore Children’s. Every summer I help out with the Summer Reading Program (but next summer I’ll do something twice as awesome), and every school-year I help with storytime if I can.

Unfortunately this year my little brother’s P.E. class got in the way of storytime, and Miss Gill (it’s Jill with a “G”, not like that organ fishes have) is having to do without me. Oh well.

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Every Wednesday a little before 10 AM, Mom abandons me in front of the library, which isn’t open yet. If there’s anyone at the Information Desk (which is against the window in the front), I knock on the window. Everyone who works there knows me by name, so they let me in because they know I only do that when I’m working.

I say a cheerful “Good morning, how are you?” even if I don’t feel like it, and sign in at the Volunteen Desk. (Yes, we are called Volunteens. We’re teenage volunteers; what else are they supposed to call us?) From there I can walk to Children’s, around the desk, and straight into the back, without having to flash my colorful nametag at anybody.

They’ve all known me since I was twelve, after all.

It’s a ton of fun, knowing all the librarians who work there. Once, a friend of mine (who has also worked there for a long time) needed to use the diecut machine in the back for her Girl Scouts. So I said I’d come with her, and we went to the Children’s desk.

The librarian at the desk was new and didn’t know us. The rule is that for anyone to use the diecut machine, there has to be a librarian present. So the lady called to the back saying that there were two girls who wanted to use the machine. Well, Miss Solina told her to send us back, and when she saw us, she said, “Oh hi girls! I know you; you’re perfectly capable of using the machine. See ya!”

We’ve both used that thing so many times during work, she didn’t have to hang around and watch us to make sure we didn’t get hurt.

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Last Wednesday when I walked back into Children’s, the first thing I heard was this:

“Has anyone seen that brown mouse anywhere?!”

Anywhere else, and I’d be concerned. There? I walked to my usual chair, slung my jacket across the back, and said, “Hi everybody! I love walking into conversations back here.”

They all laughed. Miss Solina commented that it’s like walking into nowhere else. Behind-the-scenes in the Children’s area is a unique place.

That’s why I love it so much.

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Do you volunteer anywhere? Are you old enough to have a job? Tell me about your work, in the comments!

Reality Check

I needed one.

I got one.

By the time I did…it was too late.

#%&@!

NaNoWriMo

Yeah. So, really sorry for poofing on you guys. I got kind of busy with life this week, and barely had time to sleep, let alone blog.

So…I did an entire project in three days, which is pretty impressive.

Bounced off several walls at book club. I don’t even like the chick, but she was all I had. And I’m famous for working with what I’m given.

Writing over five hundred words a day is both easier and harder than it sounds. Five hundred words honestly isn’t as much as it sounds. But it’s more than I usually do in a day, especially thirty days in a row. So I’m like a thousand words behind.

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I should probably explain. Sparklers, if you’re reading this, you should know what NaNoWriMo is. The rest of you…whatever.

It’s short for National Novel Writing Month, which irritates me because it lacks a hyphen between “Novel” and “Writing”. Anyway. Basically, the goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in November. If your face looks like this:

O.O

just looking at that number, and you’re still in school (Kindergarten through twelfth), then you can do the Young Writers’ Program, where you can set your own word goal.

Mine’s close to seventeen thousand (that’s 17,000). Actually it’s 16,919. Don’t ask. It’s complicated, and involves me cheating slightly.

Not really cheating, just not following the preferred method. Don’t jump all over me.

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So in case you haven’t noticed, I’m really really tired. Lookin’ forward to the picnic this afternoon. Gives me a bit of a break.

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So, if for some weird reason you feel like reading my NaNo story, I’ll post the links.

The working title is Bloodfairy, so be warned.

Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three

Comments are welcome, but remember it’s a rough draft. Not all the wrinkles are smoothed out yet. So no nit-picking if you can help it. Thanks.

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Sixteenth birthday in exactly a month. Excited, sorta. More excited for the day after that…

Final Proof

I stood four steps away from the metal chain-link fence. Between it and me, two steps from either, she faced me silently. For a while we simply watched each other, not saying a word.

If it hadn’t been for the blue eyes, I would have thought I was looking into a mirror. And perhaps, in a way, I was. Maybe, I told myself thoughtfully, maybe we were never meant to meet our reflections in real life. Maybe we see them only in the mirror for a reason.

The brilliant, soft, sad blue was still focused on me. With a pang I remembered her eyes only looked like that when she spoke of, or was near, someone she truly loved. I winced.

To cover my thoughts I spoke. “You have a choice.” My voice came out abrupt and rough.

She was silent.

“You can either touch the fence,” I nodded to the chain-link behind her, and her eyes flickered in acknowledgement but never left my face, “or you can take this back.” I offered my right hand in her direction slightly, letting her see the ashen lump quivering in my palm. It was unrecognizable as anything ordinary. I doubted she would know what it was.

“My soul?” she breathed in astonishment. I was wrong; she had known immediately.

I nodded. “One or the other. Take this, or touch that.”

Her eyes glowed, but it was a shattered, broken glow. “Oh, how could you give me such a choice?” she asked softly.

For a moment, I pitied her. I had given her a difficult choice; I knew that.

Then, she continued, a painful whisper, “It isn’t a choice at all…”

My pity vanished in an instant, replaced by fury. So it wasn’t difficult at all, was it? Perfectly easy to choose, was it? I reached out my hand to her bitterly, but she was no longer looking at me.

As the last words had left her lips she had turned, swiftly crossing the two steps that separated her from the fence, hands outstretched.

She barely had time to lock her fingers into the metal links before she fried.

I stared. In that moment, that single heartbeat between the second she spoke and the second she died, I had thought that my old nickname for her had been misplaced. That she hadn’t been who I thought she was all along. But now, looking at her dangling limp against the chain-link, I knew I had been mistaken.

I looked down suddenly at the still-quivering grey lump I held. It darkened, turning black. Then the color changed, fading to a deep, beautiful purple. I smiled faintly. What that color had meant to us…

Then the thought occurred to me: What if she hadn’t known what her choice was?

“Oh…god…I thought she knew…” I whispered.

Then, impossibly, her voice rang softly through the air. The sound emanated from her soul, cradled in my hand.

“Of course I knew. Of course I understood the reference. Of course I understood what you were asking me to do.”

“Then why…”

“I told you when you took that part of me, my soul, that I never, ever wanted it back. I proved over and over that I meant what I said. This was the last proof you will ever need, isn’t it?”

“Yes…”

“I would have done anything for you, and I did—even die.”

I couldn’t answer through my tears.

“I loved you. I love you. I will always love you,” her soul whispered gently, each word falling like a hailstone on my heart. I was so full of holes already, that another eleven shouldn’t have done much harm. But now I seemed more empty space than heart.

As her voice died, her soul dried out, collapsed in on itself, crumbled to dust. It fell through my fingers as purple ash. Freed from its burden, my hand fell to my side without my instruction.

I was left alone, standing four steps away from a dead girl—a near-perfect reflection of myself—hanging on a chain-link fence, tears running freely down my face, wondering why I had asked for that final proof.

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Depressing? Yes. Beautiful? I think so, but it’s your call. Tell me what you think in the comments.

Sorry, I’ve Been in Quarantine

Hey there, readers.

Sorry I poofed. I’ve been quarantined in my room the last couple days. Got this really strange cold that kind of looked like flu for a while there.

Root of my suffering: Twenty-four-hour headache. Then one that faded in and out for the next day.

Still not fully up to speed yet. Don’t expect too much out of me. Not even complete sentences.

Yeah, I know, the Grammar Queen has fallen. Deal with it. She’ll be back online in a few days. Give her some time to reboot. She’s gotta be up and running 24/7. She deserves a break.

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Yeah…doing my best to stay afloat. Don’t even wanna find out what happens if I drown. Besides, just don’t feel like finding out if there’s a God. Not yet anyway.

I’ve promised someone I’ll “live to see the end of next year”. Or rather, the someone said something about that, and I silently promised it was gonna happen. And I intend to keep that promise. Least I can do, after all that poor kid’s done for me.

Don’t even think we realize how I’ve been rewritten over the past ten and a half months. The plan is to let that rewriting go on for at least another month and a half. Beyond that…we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. Or something.

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I was suprised to get back and see that I had a bunch of page views, even the days I didn’t post anything. No comments, but that’s just icing on the cake. (Mmm…cake…) Just knowing someone’s listening is enough for me.

Guess I’ll let you get back to your lives now. Thanks for bothering.