Slow Fast

Yeah, it's an oxymoron. I don't care. I'm cranky.

Cranky

It's Yom Kippur. I'm fasting, just drinking water. Because dehydration may be what you're supposed to do, but I'm disinclined to force it upon myself. I mean, hunger is one thing, but I'm not going too far.

And I'm hungry.

Hungry

And repetitive too, I guess...

Yeah...

And low on energy...

And with a strange urge to bother all my friends over the internet...

Internet

Yay

HUNGER

Only an hour and 15 minutes to go, people...only 1.25 hours...only...

HUNGER
CRANKY

mfff

Friday

I haven't updated in a while...hmm...

Friday was One School One Book. Guess what it was, and what made my summer infinitely more awesome?

The Fault in Our Stars. Which I finished in January. And loved.

So I got to talk about it the whole morning. And then I got to go to a panel called "Humor and Irony: Can Irony Save Us?" which I enjoyed quite a lot even though some were disappointed. There were two professors on comedy and one stand-up comedian on the panel. They talked about the ways irony can help us, but they also talked about how it sometimes hides us and hides our opinions, which can be dangerous.

Then there was a wrap-up video, which included part of this Vlogbrothers video. I was so, so excited after that. People were looking at me funny. Did I care? Not at all.

Then of course there was math and wellness, which felt rather boring after the morning, but you know, what can you do.

Then there was play practice. My practice was from 4:15-5:15, so I had two hours to sit around in the hallway. In the first hour, a pretty-much-friend of mine and I lay on the floor and looked at the ceiling and discussed random stuff while the rest of the group talked about weight and body image. She was picking at the linoleum tiling when -

Her: Oh, I picked up the floor.
Me: What? You mean it feels like you picked up the floor?
Her: Look. (She held up a green linoleum tile)
Me: Oh. Well then.

She was going to put it back when I stopped her, tore a piece of paper out of my notebook, and got out a pen. My side of the paper said something like

DFTBA!

Shira Abramovich, Class of 2016
September 21, 2012

And her side said

Hi!
F*ck

I don't remember what else she wrote, but in her words, "I enjoy writing curse words on random stuff." Then we stuck the paper in and squished the linoleum back into place.

So that's that. I went to my friend's house for dinner later and borrowed two books from her dad's enormous comic book collection.

And it was a lovely Friday.

Nostalgia and some realizations

I'm in one of those moods when you really want to cry but you can't so you can't get it out and you're stuck in this sort of pool of sadness, some of it pointless. Often it's nostalgia. It is now.

See, today I thought about Israel. I miss it a lot. Sometimes it just doesn't feel like that was life at all, just a story that I can tell, one that most people are really interested in.

I miss it, I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss our tiny apartment and my strip of blue wall and the  public transportation and school. Six months can be so long but so short.

And my girlfriend is at another school now and suddenly I can see how it might have been for my friends back here. Oh, it must have been hard. I miss her so much at school and every so often she'll come up in conversation and we'll ask why she isn't here, and we'll remember that she went to a different high school and none of us can really talk to her because she's so busy.

I just hope that we won't stop at least attempting to see each other. I want to have fun at school and I want her to have fun at her school but I wish we could talk.

I wish a lot of things.

Life, the Universe, and Everything

1: Let's start our being animals club meeting! I'm gonna be a monkey!
2: I'm gonna be an...elephant!
3: And I'm gonna be a lioness! Look at mah hair glow like a lioness, I'm so scary! You're scared of me, you're scared of me! Rarr!
1: It's gonna be hard to drive like this. I'm a monkey, I'm a monkey! Look! Bananas! Let's veer off the road and attack them!
3: Look at me, I'm scary! Rarr, rarr, I'm scary! Aw yeah, you are so scared!

---

1: You're ruining the innocence! So young! So young!
2: It's a chair!
1: It can't say no, how does that make you feel, huh, the chair can't say no! It doesn't have a choice!

---

1: Want to have a look at my toenail collection?

---

1: I have a seizure every time anyone says "um." * seizure *

---

1: My pet turtle died and you're laughing! You're not supposed to laugh at that!
2: Well, you have to admit, it is a funny story...
1: How can you SAY that?!
2: Um, your friend fed it sulfuric acid instead of water! That just doesn't happen!

---

1: I'M TERRIFIED OF SHOES! AHHHH!

---

Girl: You know that time when...umm...we were at your house and your brother was there?
Boy: Um, um...yeah?
Girl: I, well, I, um, may or may not have made out with him...
Boy: ...
Boy: You're SIX YEARS OLD!
Girl: He started it!

---

You see, my friends, I have found the answer to life, the universe, and everything. It is not forty-two, oh no. The answer is - get ready for it - IMPROV.

Why is anyone impersonating animals? Improv. Why did someone's friend feed a turtle sulfuric acid? Improv. Why did a six-year-old make out with someone? Improv...or something really, REALLY, wrong.

Homework

Me: I don't want to do it.

Me: You have to.

Me: Ugh.

Me: Get off your blog.

Me: I don't want to.

Me: English homework. History homework. Math. Do it.

Me: But I don't want to be dissecting a book I read for pleasure at 7:30 in the evening! I want to properly read at my own leisure and be able to get to bed at a decent time!

Me: So start your work.

Me: Aghhhh.

Me: Shut up. Now.

The Personal Essay

I slept over at my friend's house two nights ago. My girlfriend, who goes to another school, was there too and she said that her assignment for the weekend was to write a personal essay.

"That sounds fun!" I said. "I want to write a personal essay!"

Basically, she wants me to transfer to her school. Her main argument is that there may be a lot of work, but it will be work I'll want to do. So far (as much as I hate to say it) her argument does have some substance.

Well, anyway. It took me three hours (factoring in the large amount of A Very Potter Musical that I was watching while doing the work) to do a short paragraph for my history class, and it took me fifteen minutes to write the personal essay. (Ouch, right?) Anyway, here it is. (I do realize that this is short too.)

---

I must have been six, and it had snowed.

“It’s a snow day,” Aba said, “and the driveway needs shoveling.” We didn’t even have our snow blower or our digital camera yet – it was that long ago. So I, along with then three-year-old Itai, was recruited to help clear the driveway. Or perhaps we volunteered. We were young enough that we liked doing chores.

We bundled up in all our gear in the order that kindergarten teachers always say you should – snow pants, boots, coat, hat, gloves. Itai and I each got a small shovel and set out to help our parents. It’s possible that we were really being a nuisance rather than helping, but it was probably better than leaving us inside to our own devices.

It took a long time – of course it did, otherwise they wouldn’t have called a snow day. It was eerily silent, the kind of silence that you only have when it snows. The endless whiteness swallows up the sound.

I was shoveling by the big living room window when I stopped and looked around. My nose was cold and red and hurting a little and everyone was working around me.

“Am I doing well?” Itai asked in his high-pitched voice.

“You’re doing perfectly,” Mama said.

For a minute I almost felt like I wasn’t there, like I was looking through my eyes from somewhere far away. It was like this bundle of questions suddenly was delivered to my mind. Why are we here? How are we here?

It’s the first time I actually remember the questions. How did it happen? How did I come to be right here, right now? How am I alive?

After maybe a minute it occurred to me that I should probably keep on shoveling. I pushed the questions aside, stuck the shovel in the snow, and threw it to the side.

So far, it’s been eight years since then. I haven’t stopped asking.

Beginnings

So high school started this week.

Or, should I say -

OH MY GOD, HIGH SCHOOL STARTED THIS WEEK.

Well, aside from its inevitable enormity and whatever, it looks like it will be pretty good, actually.

Crazy? Almost definitely. Fun? Looks like it. Adventure? Hopefully.

Great Friends

Me: Oh, hi! (...I haven't seen you in eight months...)
Her: Fuck you.
Me: Thanks. (I missed you too!)

Which pretty much sums up our sort-of friendship. It's all in jest, all in jest.

September?!

How?

The Hogwarts Express chugged along to Hogwarts at 11 am today and now Asylum of the Daleks is airing and high school is starting in three days.

Huh?

Um

Doctor Who is back on today, AHHHH!

So I've been hunting around for a way to watch it. And now, when the UK premiere is practically over, I found one. Um. Thanks.