Why I Like Autumn

It's hot.
...
Quite hot.

This isn't the kind of heat you find mildly uncomfortable as you walk to your car but promptly forget about with the turn of the air conditioning dial.
It's not the kind of heat a glass of lemonade and an awkward floppy hat can solve.

I mock those naive souls.

This is oppressive, heavy heat that presses down on you like a fog, so solid you could jar it, so crippling it transforms even the most outdoors-inclined to liquified blobs steadily becoming one with the sofa. It gets under your skin, melts your brain and mutes your thoughts to the capability of an average insect.
Basically, it makes you feel like one great big sticky puddle of melted ice cream that seeps all down the sidewalk cracks and glues itself to the bottom of your shoe.

Ugh.

So to help break the monotony of my stir-crazy existence, I've been writing my autobiography with stick figures. It's quite entertaining, as it so happens, and really caters to my sophisticated art medium. Also, with any luck (and given that our mail delivery person isn't preoccupied sorting out their alter ego as an underground crime-fighting warlord), my ukulele should come tomorrow!

I should go outside at least for a bit before my body turns into a complete gelatinous mass of unused muscle.

So long, sleep tight, and drive home safely!
~Elizabeth

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE.
Speaking of frozen dairy deserts, today my mom and I ventured out to the Comfy Cow ice cream bar. A dull, jingling cow bell hangs above the door and a colorful blackboard over the counter proclaims an array of mouth-watering textures that made my eyes the size of saucers just to stare at. Man vs Food's very own Adam Richman took on their Comfy Cow Sundae challenge, fifteen monstrous scoops (around 5.5 pounds of sugar and brain freeze), and failed. Our choices were a bit more modest- peach for her and black raspberry chip for me, a heaping mound of dark, creamy deliciousness set magnificently astride the crunchy, flaky, chocolate-dipped cone.
Simply wondrous.

A Caped Vigilante

I watched The Dark Knight Rises yesterday.
...I still have shiny-anime-eyed, suppressed-squeal giddy afterglow from the sheer epicness.

So there I was on the porch yesterday afternoon. Doctor Who shirt proudly donned, DS lite in pocket, shoes sloppily tied, money to pay for my tickets settled comfortably in my brother's palm. And then our neighbors drove up in the most amazing car in the universe.
It's gloriously tiny, enough to make a troupe of circus clowns drool puddles. Bucket-like seats, barely enough backseat room to support a chicken-legged six-year-old, a ceiling tailored for the likes of hobbits. Horrible Nicki Minaj music pounded through the speakers and vibrated to my bones, and the wind from the sun roof gusted on my face in an unrelenting torrent that drowned out all possible conversation.

I was beginning to get a crick in my back from stooping by the time we got there, head pressured against the rough fabric of the roof. We rushed inside, complimenting each others' nerd shirts on the way ("The Angels Have the Phone Box" and a rage face mash-up respectively), grabbed a packet of Swedish fish at the counter, and settled down into the cool, comfortable darkness of the theater to bask in the flicker of TV's warm glowing warming glow.

And then it began.

I have a sudden urge to spoil things for you folks, but as I am a gracious, hospitable human being, I'll suppress it and spare you said agony. Jerks.
My little frenemy, nicknamed by moi as Pepito, wasn't quite so chivalrous however. He shouted the game-changing phrase of destruction it as loud as his shrill vocal cords would allow when visiting at our house, purely for the malicious pleasure of seeing a great plot turn smashed upon the concrete, like a dropped glass ball, in front of our disbelieving eyes.
BUT, said spoiler turned out to be a false lead, which in turn made the ACTUAL twist ending even more discombobulating...
So his frenemy status remains un-toppled.
I don't know what to do with that kid.

Kbaifo'now!

~Elizabeth
Supreme Overlord of All the Things

A novel unfinished

Greetings, friends and potential mortal foes.

So.
Last year was my first year of homeschooling.
(Well, other than once in fourth grade. But my schooling past, involving skipped grades and half-levels, is too complicated for me to delve into at this point.)
And through the various homeschool emails and webbernet groups my mom subscribes to we found this super-fabulous curriculum called the One Year Adventure Novel (loving shortened to OYAN by its devotees. Pronunciation is a subject of debate).

So, there I was with this book in my hands, pages all crisp and white, that new shiny textbook gloss glistening up at me, so much potential and excitement within that brick of papery goodness. I was set, I was ready to go. TIME TO WRITE A NOVEL IN A YEAR!
...Well, here I am again nearly a calendar year later, with 140 typed pages under my belt. And barely six chapters of the outlined twelve. I can feel my interest in my own story dwindling further by the day, sputtering out of the balloon that was so inflated at the beginning of this that it was near exploding; in my mind my plot becomes sillier and even more needlessly complicated in a story world that can't sustain it by the day. I'm a procrastinator, plain and simple. A procrastinator and a perfectionist, two labels that when mixed produce an almost deadly concoction of lazy.

I'm still going to finish this thing, though, if it takes me another six months to get my second wind.

But make sure you don't get me wrong: the curriculum itself is brilliant. I've learned more about writing- well, not just writing, but how to truly tell a story- this year than all the other years in my life combined. And the summer workshop? Absolutely AMAZING. The community that has formed around OYAN is something simply wonderful. Deliciously nerdy, enthusiastic and fun, bursting with the Holy Spirit. Someday when I have a couple hours of boredom I'll tackle trying to describe that five-day interlude of nerdfighting, Doctor Who cosplaying, cheering for Jeff Gerke whenever he took a drink on stage, craziness, worship, and of course, writing.

Until then,
May the soot gremlins hide faithfully in your attic.

~Elizabeth

P.S. My brother, who has been gone for five weeks at smarty scholarship camp, is coming home today! We cleaned his basement cave of a room (a task that should have involved shovels and pickaxes) and painted it, so I think he'll be pleased.

In which I fall from the sky and land in an ungraceful heap

Well, here I am in the blogosphere.
As I sit up, muscles creaking like old floorboards, I'm looking around as panicked and confused as a cat thrown into a bouncy house at a five-year-old's birthday party. I've got scrapes on my elbows and a throbbing lump on my head, and this new world should prove interesting.
I don't know if there is a particular set of note cards that illustrate the way in which one is supposed to launch a blog- perhaps there is, but the Google search bar is too far away for me to bother- so, instead, I'm just going to wing it.
I think you'll find I'll be doing that quite a lot.
This is most likely going to be recording of my day-to-day expeditions: my monster-slaying and magic-finding in the chigger-infested realm of my backyard woods, my thoughts, as rambling and incoherent as they sometimes might be, and my little projects that most of the time amount to me, on my bedroom floor, surrounded by scraps of paper and hands coated in glue.
Although some days are rather less adventureful, I'm ashamed to admit. Me, plodding about the house, picking up things and setting them down again, skipping aimlessly through the meadows of the interweb. I hope to change that with the start of a new school year and the clipping of the metaphorical blog ribbon.
I'd like to think I've already set the Calvin and Hobbes wagon downhill. For instance, just yesterday, I ordered a ukulele via the amazonian internet shopping services. As far as I'm concerned, it's the perfect instrument- portable, unique, fun, and self-teachable. Tiny Tim is my new idol.
Since yesterday I have also made it up to "T" learning Morse Code.
(Flash cards are lovely, useful things. Do not underestimate their power.)
Hopefully both of these hobbies will amount to something or another and not tossed into the wastebasket in the back of my headbrain, with my motivation sputtering to a rather embarrassing halt in the middle of the road.

Well, for now, may confetti be sprinkled upon all thine heads, and the guilt-monkeys not descend because of that unfinished project you know you should be working on right now.

Allonsy!

~Elizabeth

 

P.S. ...Don't blink.