CRAZY

I haven't been this hormonal in a long time. Last night, it started....

My mom made my siblings and I popcorn for dinner. I love popcorn and, like the crazy girl I am, hid it so that I could control when my siblings ate some. They obliged. However, soon enough, my dad ambled into the kitchen, reached onto the counter and grabbed the largest bowl of popcorn.

"You better not eat all of that," I warned him. I tried to be normal, to control the edge in my voice, but inside I was raging. My popcorn! MY POPCORN!

He went into the TV room and proceeded to eat HALF THE BOWL. I could not control myself when I walked in ten minutes later, his greedy fingers scooping the delicious kernels into his mouth, his eyes trained to the television screen, not even visually enjoying the buttery goodness. "You can't take that popcorn!" I cried. "It's for our dinner!"

My dad threw the bowl down and stalked off. I ran upstairs and cried until my parents left for their date.

Eventually, I came back downstairs and my siblings and I took our full bowls of popcorn (my mom had made us some more) and watched some movies. First, we watched The Lion King. I could not understand how I ever handled The Lion King before. Its devastating! I couldn't stop crying. We put in Rudolph, instead. Also, devastating. He's a misfit! I couldn't handle it. I left after twenty minutes and went to read Chloe's book 21 Proms. I cried and cried.

MY LIFE IS OVER. MY LIFE IS JUST LIKE THESE PROMS. ALL OF MY RELATIONSHIPS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME AS THESE. I tried to quiet myself down by contemplating how old and mature I am. Twenty. I'm twenty! I am mature! I am completely in control of myself!

To say the least, today didn't go very well.

And, unfortunately, my mom is about to make popcorn again...

Sleepy

Our class went twenty minutes over today. I wandered down the ice-covered sidewalk afterward and my head was boiling. Through a little yellow window I saw the inside of a little yellow house--the molding, the family portraits, the bookshelves. I love yellow houses.

Throughout my entire childhood I hated brick houses, even though my father would tell me that WE had a brick house so that if the grass burned our house wouldn't burn too.

When my parents divorced, my mom and us kids moved to a little yellow house. It felt safe.

When my mom remarried, we moved to a brick house. Life was exciting. I was living in Detroit. My family was expanding. I changed my mind. I would like brick houses! Maybe someday I would even live in a brick house!

But now, eight years later, I can't do it. I don't like brick houses. I love my family, of course. (This isn't some sort of strange symbolism.) But I don't like brick houses, I like little yellow houses.

I miss my family; I want to be a teenager again

It started in the fall. Fall isn't very long. Spring lasts longer. I can take spring and it can tease me and whip me and leave me breathless but fall always catches me off guard. It punches me in the gut with vibrant colors and cold wind. Then, its winter and we are no longer standing by a river shivering into our sweaters but we are freezing in blankets and no one wants to leave the fire.

The good thing about winter is that it is a long romance. Night intensifies all feeling and winter--snow against sky, eyes sparkling with champagne--is perpetual night. I can stand with the snow falling into my messy hair and my lips bitten and my cheeks flushed and you will kiss me. I can stand straight under a mistletoe with a Christmas sweater and polished fingernails and you will kiss me. I can run breathless up a snowbank and slip over a patch of ice--spilling red hat, red gloves into the snow--and you will, inevitably, kiss me.