So guess what my driving school’s name is?

That’s right: The Sheila S. C——- School of Automotive Excellence.

Their record is spotless!

However, it has only been a month and a half.

And today, I nearly crashed into a little old man who was coming out of the dialysis center. After we got through that one, I parked (crookedly!) and mom asked what my backup plan was. This is my backup plan: Jesus Take the Wheel. My main plan is drive 5 or 10 under the speed limit if at all possible, never move my arms from their position, avoid other cars and people and animals at all costs, and say “hoooooly crap” and “ahhh scary!” a lot.

This is possibly not the best approach.

I asked mom yesterday if we could drive in a different neighborhood where I don’t know anyone (about 2 minutes after forcing my friend’s mother off the road) and she replied, “No honey, I think people need to become aware of the danger.”

I’ve driven to violin lesson 2 weeks in a row: the first time, I pulled in wrong and had to get out of the car to walk over and punch in the keycode; the second time, I slowed wayyyy down for a speed hump only to realized that there was no speed hump; and then I discovered that it is a bad idea to talk with your hands while you drive.

Driving is a lot harder than it looks.

Part two.

I promised!!

This has been a really strange school year: I took the PSATs (189 composite…above average but not my goal)…and I did two AP classes (but didn’t take the AP tests), and I did Sonlight Core which was REALLY FREAKING DIFFICULT, and I did a LOT of music…and I was a total bum. So my average day has been get up between ten and eleven, shower eat and school, leave for rehearsal at 12:30, get back around three, and cram in school between then and six.

I want next year to be fun! I want to have time to do extra things like debate team and community music groups,  I want to score over 200 on the PSATs and do well on the real SATS, district orchestra, etc etc etc…oh so many goals

AND I ONLY HAVE TWO YEARS LEFT AT HOME: HOW CRAZY IS THAT?

So I’m doing summer school! And I am actually going to get up at a decent hour and do work!

I will not be done with literature till July, unfortunately…and then I will start next year in September.

In math I am doing a course that is designed to take three semesters. If I do three days a week I’ll be done in September and can spend October reviewing basic algebra and geometry before the test. Then no more math till January! Which clears up concert season.

Science I just have to finish out the end of the year…half a test, a dissection, and an experiment and I’m done! Then next year is physics.

I am teaching myself psychology for fun out of an old college textbook I bought at a garage sale.

I am continuing Latin and Word Power Made Easy (My vocabulary book, which I ignored for the better part of the year, actually did it, adored it, and felt like a fool) and starting back with French II. Oh and logic on DVD.

I am getting a bunch of books from the school and library to read for fun school, especially history because history is the one subject I’m not any good in at all.

Is fun school an oxymoronic phrase? I mean that I’m getting educational books to read because I’m interested, not for credit. Meanwhile, Ben has decided to breed a blue raspberry.

I’ll let you know how all of this goes next week.

You know it’s bad when you lack new posts so often that you get no spam.

I have (meaning will throughout the course of the next few days) constructed several “update” posts for your convenience.

Cause you all love to read about my boring life, right?

I should blog about international issues or something, that would get readers. Except I don’t know that much about international issues.

This is the music update post!

Band is over. Right now, I am thinking band is over forever, because I don’t plan to do it next year! Mainly because I haven’t learned anything from the current teacher. I have promised to come to the concert though. Our band concert was a few weeks ago, and it went fine. My one solo was great, the others were average but also not really important. The giant horn solo Rick did he messed up, so he started saying extremely bad words and I started patting his back, which I am sure will look really professional on the DVD.

We also had to wear formal (meaning dressy) spring outfits, which I owned none of so we had to go dress shopping. I hate clothes shopping. Then I actually wore the dress (which Sophie picked out) and had a lot of compliments…when my friend’s mother mentioned it for the fourth time a week later I realized I probably should dress up more often.

That same week I had orchestra auditions, and I was irrationally nervous (I rarely get nervous) and messed up in the audition…so I got 8th chair. Which isn’t bad by any means, but it was a personal worst. That was the violin audition…even after learning all the music I opted not to try out on viola (after hearing them I feel confident I could have done fine, however) because what was a crush-situation turned into a stalker-situation to the point where I was actually scared. And there is a song blog on youtube about how I am not dating this person. So I’m trying not to engage that mess at all.

Then, I hurt my wrist. Playing baseball.

Fortunately, it was my right wrist. Unfortunately, it got all bruised and swollen and I wasn’t able to lie to my mother about the pain (I tried but I’m a terrible liar) so I had to go to the doctor and get an x-ray. It is not broken. We don’t think. But I got pain meds and I had to wear a brace, which was just really awkward but better than constantly protecting my wrist from people.

So I got hurt on Sunday, went to the doctor on Monday, and had giant multi-hour rehearsals on Tuesday and Wednesday. Getting a bad chair, playing a lot of horn in symphony, and refusing to join chamber orchestra turned out to be a blessing in disguise with my wrist. The concert was Wednesday night…I thought it was only OK but the director is pleased.

I am done with public school music for the year! My last day was yesterday: it was accompanied with a nice certificate and exhortations to practice for districts over the summer.

The districts piece is Mozart: Concerto no. 3. It’s not terribly terribly difficult, but it is very challenging to be a standout player with Mozart, because everyone and their cousin knows how to play it. 

I now have two more violin lessons and then the recital in a few weeks. I just practiced at home for the first time since Saturday (such a lack of practice that my violin went out of tune! Which it never does), and that was TERRIBLE. Forget the last two phrases being shaky, the whole thing is shaky now. I am playing this piece called “meditation” from an opera called Thais, by Jules Massenet. It is incredibly slow and finicky and currently sounds like a weasel is caught in a clothes dryer. Ben is playing the piano with me both at the recital and at church, and then we are doing a duet which I hate.

If you want to come let me know, we were supposed to invite people but I never did.

Saturday is the music festival! Which is a big deal in our little town: everyone plus  a ton of people from New York and New Jersey shows up. Ben and I are meeting friends, which should be lovely.

Then this summer I am going to practice my violin and my viola and learn the clarinet and oboe and possibly give a last hurrah on the horn.

More on that in the school update post.

Mom is gone today. She has a church conference to go to.

So I am in charge!!! Muahahahahaha!!!

I mean, this will be an excellent opportunity to test all my home-ec skills.

We just had the following conversation, none of which is made up or exaggerated…no, I am not lying. I know this is insanely inane.

Me (trying to turn on my desk lamp which has not been working for 2 days): Argh! Would one of you run downstairs and get me a new 40-watt bulb? Mine burned out I think.

Ben: Oh…I meant to tell you, I took your lightbulb.

Me: What? It’s right here, it’s just dead.

Ben: You know how Sophie’s lamp is really bright?

Me: Yeah…

Ben: That’s cause she has your good bulb. I put the old one in your lamp.

Me: WHAT? What the hell! Why?

Ben: I was helping her with math.

Me: So you took my lightbulb and replaced it with a broken one.

Ben: While I was helping her I sort of hit the lamp with the telephone so the wire thingy

Me: Filament.

Ben: Whatever. I hit it with the phone kind of hard so it broke and Sophie was trying to work in the dark and it was annoying cause she was whining and so I took your bulb and gave you the broken one.

Me: You couldn’t have gone downstairs and gotten a new one?

Ben: It’s like in Robin Hood, when you take from the rich and give to the poor.

Me: No. It’s not.

Ben: Yes! Like if a rich person has two boats and the poor person has zero then I come and eventually everyone has one boat and it’s even!

Me: That is a stupid comparison! This is like if a rich person has a boat they take care of and a poor person has a boat that they ruin because you hit it with a telephone reciever then you steal the rich person’s boat!!!  Also, I’ve been complaining about it for days and you just ignored it?

Ben: I meant to switch it out later….plus, you don’t even take that good care of your boat!

Me: YOU hit the BOAT with a PHONE which is why it broke, you moron!

Sophie: Boat?

Then we all collapsed in hysterical laughter.

I hope Mom comes home soon.

Here is Olivia’s Helpful Guide to English Mistakes that Annoy Her.

Nip it in the butt: What? Huh? The expression is “nip it in the bud”, and it refers to gardening, people.

Pull out all the cops: Again, what could this possibly refer to? Cops? Honestly. It’s “pull out all the stops“, and it originated with the stops on a pipe organ.

Alright: All right is ALWAYS two words. All right?

Alot: I’m 99% sure this is the same way. But people still make this mistake. A lot. Wow, I need to stop these puns…

Gillotine: you say it ghee uh teen. Definitely not for when you really mean pillory.

Definately: There are two e’s and two i’s in definitely.

Wat?: I know people mostly use this in chatspeak, but is it that much trouble to type an extra h?

And this is my new favorite misspelling: conceded, instead of conceited.

Yeeeeeeeees…..I am a spelling nazi.

I CAN DRIVE!!!

Well, I can drive between 5am and 11pm in this state with a licensed driver aged 21 or older in the front seat….but still, I can drive.

Our DMV, as a tribute to inefficient bureaucracy, is only open on Thursdays…and I have heard rumors of Saturdays, but I have also heard that this applies only to road tests and then only depending on where you live. What it means in effect is that everyone in the entire county has to get their licenses, permits, road tests, photos, and what have you on that one day. I waited in line (with mom and Sophie who are my new role models) for THREE HOURS to take a test that took me about five minutes.

I only got one wrong, and it was something I don’t plan to use about what the penalty is for your first offense of underage drinking.

This is my tribute to:

• The lovely woman with the cornrows in front of us who turned sixty in January and has two daughters who don’t drive
• The woman who lived in New Jersey, where everything is more efficient, and needs glasses
• The woman who didn’t go with Geico because they wanted  to charge her something ridiculous for insurance
• The vet from NYC who has a second home in Oregon and a pickup truck
• The man who can make figure eights on half a basketball court on his motorcycle
• The other man with the mustache who can do the same thing only better
• The first man’s wife Megan, who was getting her motorcycle permit
• The girl whose birth certificate had her name misspelled
• The girl whose examiner gave her the test and then went to lunch before he graded it
• The woman who used to go to school in the DMV building…her classroom was underneath Joey’s.
• The two women who spent half an hour discussing the better neighborhoods of the Bronx and Queens
• Mike the DMV employee
• The person who called Mike on the phone and asked him whether the DMV did driving school (no ma’am we do not…you should look in your yellow pages….well ma’am you should look under D for driving school and i’m sure there will be some addresses….no i don’t have a yellow pages right here so i can’t look for you….yes…that is correct…yellow pages…i don’t know ma’am, you need to get out your yellow pages and look under D…yes, D for DRIVING school…yes, it’s alphabetical….yes….you’re welcome…)
• The two women who were being too nice to each other and kept making the other go first in the photo line, thereby holding the whole thing up
• And the man who didn’t complain about his photo, thereby speeding the whole process along.

They all congratulated me when I passed, and I felt like I should ask for their emails.

And my favorite quote….”If someone got a little stall with beer and pretzels, they could make a fortune!”

I know, I am so deep, writing posts entitled, “The Future”. Mmhmm.

Does anyone want to give me career or college advice?

Anyone?

No?

Well, would you please do it anyway?

Hmm. Well anyway. I’ve been looking at journalism and nursing….and because I’m lazy and I have two more years to make this decision I haven’t really examined either of them. But I know I should. So this is where I”m starting! I know a lot of nurses, and I grew up around journalism. This year I think I have really burned out writing, and I absolutely love science, so….

I figure most of you have already gone through this, so thoughts?

CATS is the play DV Drama chose for this year.

Don’t ask. It doesn’t really fit with the theme they had going of doing plays where they can just alter the costumes each year: Hello Dolly, the Music Man, The Sound of Music….

Instead they did Cats, the play with no plot. Essentially there are a bunch of Cats who hang around in a junkyard telling each other stories, until the evil cat steals their leader.

I highly recommend watching this if you don’t know about CATS already.

You have no idea how long it took me to figure out what was going on. PLUS a lot of the music is in ridiculous time signatures, like 13/8, which is easiest to count if you say, “pineapple pinapple apple apple”, which sounds retarded but works!

The first night the fire alarm went off in the middle of the hit song Moments of Happiness because of the fog machines, which is a song I hated anyway, so I didn’t mind too much.  By the third night I was glad to be done, and my lips were sore. If I do it next year, I’m definitely playing violin. Also, I’m probably going to drop the horn, but that’s a story for another day. 

I am now going off to write a better post for tomorrow.

Thank you and good night.

I once read in a Dave Barry column that when you have two boys in the same room, their iq is halved, and if a third one joins them it’s halved again, and so on exponentially until they have the iq of margarine.

This is frighteningly true.

For example at my birthday party, the minute I suggested we have a fire the four boys were out of the house like a shot, and Ben (my formerly safety-concious little brother) got them some LIGHTER FLUID. Three fifteen-year-olds, a brand-new teenager, and lighter fluid is a bad combination, trust me.

This is the part where they had the lighter fluid and I started going “NO NO NO” and they completely ignored me and used it anyway. Until Dad came out and gave the lighter fluid to Jonathon who is the oldest and therefore theoretically the most responsible and let him put it on the kindling with supervision. Then Dad took it away.

Then they all stared at the fire that they’d laid out and went: “we need some matches”, except for Rick who said “We need some more lighter fluid”.

I was the only one who remembered to take matches when we went to start the fire.

Draw from that what you will.

These are the sensible people who stayed inside, playing the piano and singing hymns in perfect harmony.

The rest of us stared at the fire and listened to the boys have the following conversation:

Ben: This fire is lame.

Jon: We need some more lighter fluid!

Rick: Fornoff’s right.

Ben: Let’s get the sparklers!!!

Rick: SPARKLERS?!?

Jon: Ahahahaha SPARKLERS!

Thomas: I am an expert at sparklers! This one time…. *this is where  I stopped listening but you get the idea*

You would be suprised how fast three hundred sparklers go among this crowd.

Cuz who wants just one sparkler when you can light an entire box at once and then pretend to stab other people with the flaming part?

The box of sparklers actually had multiple “caution flammable” warnings on it. It is for these boys those warnings were made.

On a sidenote, my mother actually banned me from wearing black socks with my sneakers any more because they make my legs look even paler.

I’m guessing you can tell which are mine.

This is where all four boys said:

(Ben, Jon, Rick, and Tom are squinting at the fire. They have to back up because of the heat. They nod at each other and say in unison:)

We need to get some more lighter fluid.

We know what that means!

CANDY!!!!

 

Oh no, wait…I mean, Jesus is risen.

And our pastor has a halo….

And we can defy gravity!

Actually, the photo rotator is not working for me…so just…umm…tilt your head. Please?

Thank you.

Yes…my arms are freakishly long.

I attribute it to all that violin playing.

Parents

Boys in bow ties

Accompanying the choir…this is the second time in about a month. Afterwards, when the director thanked me, I said “anytime!”…meaning, let me know if there’s something else you want me to do next Easter, or possibly the Easter after…and he said, “Now that you mention it! I have these two pieces..blah blah blah…one of which is for TWO WEEKS FROM NOW (which is this coming Sunday)…oh and by the way we have two rehearsals between now and then, one of which you will miss because you will get bronchitis, and also the choir can’t really sing this particular piece…OH and the other one is written for trumpet so you’ll have to transpose every single note by a step and a half…and it would be just fabulous if  you could play it up two octaves as well. Why don’t you take it and see how you do and let me know if you need any help? Happy Easter!”

So yes, I have my work cut out for me. Also I somehow lost my mind and decided it would be fun to learn all the orchestra music on three different instruments. Ahhhhhh.

One last photo…to be honest I only took this cause I wanted to annoy the choir boys. See how Jon’s glaring? 

I’m so loved.