...I'm trying to save my wedding.

So I went to my second cousin's (who is more like a first cousin because he's the only person who is older than me in our generation in my family) wedding. I mean, he and his wife have been together for years, so she's pretty much family too. They are the nicest people in the world, so it was pretty much the perfect marriage.

And at the wedding the best man and the maid of honor gave toasts. So I start thinking to myself about how I'm going to have about 20 brides maids and like two maids of honor and it's going to be the shit.

Except I remembered, oh all my friends suck. Save for two, Audrey and Carmen, they all really suck. Like they never return my calls, or texts or anything, and I never know what the hell is going on with them. I love them when they are there. And I love them when they're not too, they're just...

selfish. They only talk to me (and Carmen) when they need us. They don't care if our lives are turning to shit and that our problems are probably about twenty times worse than theirs. They just want us to listen, and not to do anything about it. So while I'm trying to deal with my life, they want to hear nothing of it except how I pity them for doing something dumb/doing the same hypocritical thing over and over/how they have junior year and it's so hard.

Seriously, if I was getting married currently, they'd all be like "sorry but if I go to your wedding and am there for you my grades will suffer or I won't get laid." or something.

This shit, this selfish, lonely, stupid shit, is what drives people toward depression I swear to God.

So my friends better wise up, or there's going to be no wedding.

...reverse ruined my life.

I skipped school today to go take my road test. After some driving around construction I got there. The girl on line in front of me failed to signal and almost crashed into another car and passed.

I was parked at the sign on the right side of the road at about 20 feet from a stop light. The woman told me to "turn left at the light whenever you're ready." I checked my mirrors and backed up as to not fly across the lanes because the light it read.

So she says "Stop the car, that was an automatic fail."

I don't think she knew that with that sentence, she destroyed my life.

My dad's in the hospital, my mom can't drive. I've never been grounded...as punishment. My next road test is fucking June 1st. I don't leave the house for about two weeks.

I have too much to do for this. Now I can't go see my campies. It eliminated all freedom. I have to now catch rides to rehearsal with the grandma who hates me, further indebting me to her so she can use it against me.

I cry only once a year. This year it came early.

what a tone for the week.

...my grade sucks.

Once upon a time there was this honor roll girl I know who pretty much failed her AP chem midterm. And by pretty much, she means did. Anyway, when her mid-quarter interm report came, she was getting a B, so she was like, okay fine.

And then her report card came with a D+. She kind of figured it was not true (there have been mistakes on her report card before) mostly because it's pretty impossible to slip down two letter grades while showing up to class and doing all your work. Plus he would have told me or something.

So she goes into class and goes to her teacher "What's up with the D?" and he's like
"What D?" So we look at my grade, and he's like "Oh yeah, that's because you failed the midterm, you would have gotten a B- or something." So I asked him why the interm report had a B and he said it was because it was factored in. SO I made him pinkie promise he'd tell me if I was getting below a B.

In other news, when I asked my AP Music Theory teacher who doesn't really like me why I got a C+, he said "I don't know, there weren't a lot of grades."

so teachers suck.

the end.

...I probably won't get to this so much.

So basically junior year is my hitman. like in the next two and a half weeks I have: a screening of my little sister's movie at tribecca, work, ushering my mom's show, a major final composition for AP music theory due, an SAT class, my road test, a columbia visit, a benefit concert, the SAT, 10 rehearsals (not including two I'll miss), hell week, a show, the Music Theory AP (which is on my 17th birthday), and the Chem AP.

FML.

So there is a legitimate list of future topics in my phone (along with my to do list and subway directions to tribecca and columbia), so future posts will be everything on why I think krespe kreme is so fucking good to how the Jew Crew is malignant. Tonight might be a double post.

so sorry if I'm not here all the time. I happen to be everywhere else.

...I didn't change the background on my phone.

I have a friend. Actually, that's a lie. I don't have that friend anymore. See how complicated he's already being? He's like that. Carmen and I became best friends with him in Olim. Like best friends. Wallowing in how much our lives sucked but surviving it together best friends. Med call buddies.

That year, mostly, we called each other all the time. Carmen and I three way assaulted him, pretty much. Car and I are so similar that we end up saying the same things.

One day I went to visit him and we roamed around central park. There was this little path we walked down that no one else was on, and the light hit the path just right and took a picture of it. It was my background on my phone.

He had problems. We had problems, but he was worse at dealing with them, I guess.

Damn he's hard to explain.

Occasionally he'd be a dick. I'd call that one Camlemagne (a play off Charlemagne) but then he'd be Cameron again. And we'd love him again.

I can remember the last time we were friends. He hopped a train to me and then we went to Autumn's play. It was amazing, just how comfortable it was. I loved him being my best friend.

then we went to Israel, and Cameron was gone. Camlemagne was the only thing there. He was...worse than I can describe.

Soon after I got home, my phone spazzed and I got a new one, and the only picture I had for the background was a black and white one of the path.

He hates me. He tells me so every time I tried to talk to him. He tells me how awful I am, and it doesn't take a psychologist to get he's projecting. He treats Carmen like crap too.

Yesterday, there was a giant bag of gummy bears on my desk in AP chem. I took a picture of it and accidentally set it as my background picture.I don't know if it was some grand metaphor for finally letting him go.

but I couldn't do it. I changed it back.

I promised I'd never give up on him...

?

...why I'm a misfit and damn proud of it.

So I suppose I’m liked. I mean, we have this thing called the otto awards, where there’s categories like “most likely to go to the Olympics” or “most energetic” and it’s really cool because every year, from people pulling my name out of air, I get nominated. So freshman year I was nominated for “most likely to win an MTV award”. The girl who was also nominated is our weird little “miss popular” (I’ll probably have a post explaining the weird dichotomy of my school) and we’re friendly, we did theater together when we were little and were always up for the same part (she always got them). But the day of the otto awards freshman year, she told me congratulations. She thought I was going to win, but she did. Sophomore year I was nominated for most artistic, which just wasn’t going to happen, and I wouldn’t have deserved it. The cool thing about the otto awards is I always play and sing a song I’ve written. This year I’m up for “most likely to write a bestseller” and I kind of really sort of want to win it.

But anyway, this post is about me loving being a misfit. I went through my “I want to be popular” stage when I was seven. Actually. When I was in second grade I ran with the popular crowd. Instead of like drinking or staying out late, we would curse and watch PG-13 movies. I then moved out of the popular stage, and decided to try everything else. Some people never out grew it, and are still there.

See popularity, which is COMPLETELY different from being well liked, is a game. It's being the best at what everyone else wants. and I suck at that. I've been literally friends with everyone at one time or another, and I still don't have a clique. Mostly I hang out with the uber smart girls, the bands-you-never-heard-off followers (they're sweet, in middle school they used to be the materialistic simple plan heads, but they grew up a bit.) and the Jew Crew. Even the Jew Crew (which is so freaking weird it will probably get its own post), I don't actually belong to. My best friend Anya who I see literally everyday of my life (she goes to temple, camp and school with me) is my in, but I really don't fit in. I'm applying for scholarships while they're playing with light sabers on their iPhones. The Jew Crew is one of many sub popular cliques, and even has it's own dating rotation and weird bad ass ways that I just don't want to be a part of.

And I would never want to be "popular". Popularity is like this hot guy that everyone's obsessed with and wants just because they're supposed to, and I kind of feel like one of the few that can see his pimples and dick ways and isn't all that attracted to him. I'm not popular because I don't want to be. I don't care if they'd let me in. I'd rather hang out with everybody else, because those are actually the cool kids. Trying to be cool automatically makes you not.

...bullies actually do suck.

I have an unusual relationship with bullying. When I was small and went to a pre school where they pretty much let everyone do whatever (which is fine for like teenaged Jew hippies, not exactly for 3 year olds) But so there was this roving gang of five year old bullies, and naturally as I was super girl, decided someone needed to save the day. So that someone was me. So every time they attacked someone, I, a small three year old, would kick all of their asses. Which apparently was quite a sight.

Even when I was little, I was the type that everyone knew. So naturally, being in the "public eye", I was liked, and not so liked. (still kind of rings true) When someone made fun of me, I stood up for myself. For example: One day a girl we'll rename is Gertrude told me my hat looked retarded. So, being raised on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I drop kicked her.

When I was little, there was this boy that would pull my pigtails and be kind of rude (more on that and my fleeting flirt with popularity next post) and would tell me I was a terrible singer. Mostly I'd out talk him.

But so today someone in my class was humming, and my teacher (who I like but is at least all over the place and at most bi polar) was making fun of the kid he assumed was humming. So tired of him making fun of people, even though it wasn't me, I told my teacher to play nice. He said "What?" and I said "You're a bully." "What?" "Were you a bully in middle school?" He proceeds to tell me that he stood up for kids who were bullied in middle school. So I asked why he was making fun of that kid. He said he wanted to know where the whistling was coming from. I replied I doubted he was concerned for the welfare of the kid who was whistling.

At which point the kid that used to make fun of me goes "I think [insert whatever name you think would suite me here] needs a time out." I told him I think he needed to shut up. Gertrude proceeds to tell my teacher that she had been fat and bullied in elementary school. WHICH WAS A LIE. She made fun of me repeatedly until I drop kicked up, and she was not fat she was (and still is) freakishly tall.

So then the kid that used to make fun of me says something snide about me under his breath. So I asked if he was six (though he might have been smarter back then). My teacher thought I was talking to him, and although I made sure "we cool" I don't want my B to go away.

So bullies better watch out, because I do not like you. And Imma kick your ass.

...I'm sorry I laughed, but you're still wrong.

So I was in English and we were talking about getting into college, or pretty much repeated the same shit we do every day, and this one girl started going on about how us rich kids from westchester have a disadvantage because the colleges know their rich and can get help with their applications.

At this, I laughed outloud.

And then immediately appoligized for laughing, and right after the girl called me rude and looked shocked. So I had to explain myself, and explain to the class that there is no disadvantage when you can pay for five SAT classes and a tutor for every subject and someone else to write your college essay. My teacher, avoiding conflict, said there were pros and cons and ran away from the conflict.

What I didn't say was that some kids can't pay for those classes. Some kids are trying to do homeowork in between jobs so they can pay for college in the first place.

...it's different up close.

So in my English class we were talking about death. Which sounds easy enough. Like, it was very abstract, and from far away, death feels like something that a person can fully understand. A person was living, they've stopped, and everyone was going to die anyway, so it's not so hard to explain. Nothing so cosmic. Nothing so complicated. Literally nothing at all.

Later, one of my best friends told me that the Rabbi's kid from the next temple over had died. He was 19, and a freshman in College, and was either hit by a car or fell off a building. And that was merely weird.

But, understandably, one of my friends from his temple who had been friends with him was freaking out, so I spent lunch with her. She showed me a video of him, and fuck, it turns out I had none him, I just hadn't connected the name and face.

Suddenly it was real. His family would never see him again. He would never grow up to be anything, because he would never grow up.

The amazing thing is that the entirity of the north eastern community of jews is freaking out. Pulling together. They all felt it, and it was actually something inspiring out of something so bad; this one person affected so many people.

It turns out my friend had been friends with him, and they had hooked up one night, and then he ignored her for literally the rest of his life. and then I realized it's not saints who die, it's people. But he's rather think it's the other way around.

All at once I saw jokes about death everywhere. I think there's a difference from death as a character, and death as actually, the absence of life.

Watching my friend, I know death isn't simple. It's not about the end of the life, it's everything about that single life all at the same time, and it's overwhelming.

...into the woods freaked me out.

So I've had three encounters with Into the Woods. The first I hardly remembered until today, which was the full version. The full version has two REALLY REALLY long acts, and I saw it when I was a little kid with an atomically correct wolf. Little red gets rape, as does jack, the stepsisters get their feet chopped up to fit into some shoe, and that's just the first act. The second act like everyone dies, and to a little kid this is pretty disturbing. What's worse was I saw it when I was little with a group called "Broadway Training Center" and all this was done with kids. I was a mature little kid, and I got that red was singing about rape. Not even on broadway do they use a kid in this play.

The full version I saw today was with a performing arts high school and it was really good, if not disturbing, though they cut the wolf dick. not literally.

But so then I worked the jr. version, which only has the first act. So when I walked into my friend's play, I totally thought it was about the first act, which pretty cleverly and slightly creepily incorporates a bunch of fairytale characters into one story line, and nothing else. It was a fairy tale with a happy ending. So naturally, everything falls apart second act, and with everyone dead, we explore what you really want and happy endings and sex and sins and repercussions.

Everything we know was bad and we ignored because it was just a story, or a fairytale, this play made you feel bad about. The wolf and the giant were dead, but they were people too. Whenever we watch something, like a war, we are so happy our character is winning we don't care that he's killing the other side. What if the other side is right? Like, in my math class, on a smaller scale, there's a poster with Micheal Jordan pushing past someone to make a slam dunk with a quote about success. Well clearly the guy Mikey's pushing is failing.

Now my mother collects old fairytales, and I know real old ones. Disney lied. The little mermaid had her tongue cut out, snow white was almost killed like three times and still let the old witch in. Grimm brothers didn't create the myth of the happy ending. We did.

...breakfast and teen sex have very little correlation.

I just read a study that said teenagers are more likely to have sex earlier if they don't have breakfast. According to this, I should be getting some right now. Besides that, by virtue of eating breakfast you will on average loose your virginity at 19 instead of 17.

I feel like it's not that stomachs and sex are related. I think the kids having sex are too busy having it to eat breakfast.

...IMAX domes can suck it for all I care.

So I was hired by the JCC to take a bunch of kids to the Liberty Science Museum (which is a blog post for a different, distant day) and it was very different than the day before, where I was in charge of 8 seven year old boys at Chuck E Cheese. Which turned out to be one of the creepiest experiences of my life, when a robotic rat sang "I think we're alone now" at me. Also, there was a set of triplets which included identical twins (who got really pissed because I figured out how to tell them apart) and a redheaded jew fro'd kid thrown in.

But anyway, this time I have five girls, which was a little better. But so we went into the IMAX dome, and it was very very tall. So one of my little girls starts freaking out because you have to climb to get to your seats, but we get there. So seriously, the screen is gigantic. You have to watch the freaking movie on the ceiling, so the chairs are tipped all the way back and made for someone approximately 6'5", which neither me or my girls were.

Normal IMAX I'm fine with. The first IMAX movie I think I saw was a movie about micheal jordan, although I do not think he needed to be any taller. And I saw speed racer with the campies and I had approximately 3.7 seizures and saw colors I did not know existed. And the only other time I've been in an IMAX dome was in space camp, and I didn't like it much then either.

So the first thing the IMAX dome does is tell you how great it is. According to itself, it's the best thing ever. Better than wonderbread and playboy and chocolate combined. It like lights up the speakers to tell you it has eight very big and very loud sets (mozel tov.) So then it has words like "sophisticated" and "experience" flash across the screen. And then it takes you into the fucking ocean or something, and you think you're either on a magic carpet ride or tripping or both, but either way, you're getting dizzy. So I had to take one of my little girls out before she had a premature heart attack. and they have this policy that once you leave, you can't go back.

So I saved one of my girls, but four of them were still in the ocean, also known as a swirling death trap. So I bought her a ginger ale and assured her, it's fine, you're not going to drown or barf or die or whatever.

Fuck IMAX domes.

...Autumn is cute.

Well. She's one of my bestest friends from camp, and her period key is missing so it's kind of fun to press, when you don't need it. She has an etch a sketch, and let me tear apart her room. I wanted to tell you something about Autumn but she said "Don't say it" and held down the backspace. Subtle. She's doing chem homework, because she's a smarty. I really like her. She's cute. She likes to sing, about her party dress. "Do you like my party dress? This morning I was feeling dressy, mother thinks I'll get it messy..." She randomly starts speaking with accents from countries she's never been to.

When I came over today, I got lost. She lives in Connecticut, and it all looks the same. Once I got here, we had a tea party, but neither of us are particularly fond of tea, so it was pretend tea. The cookies were plastic and made off, get this "Magic, Beauty, Royalty, Sweetness, and happily ever after. They also contain sugar, spice, everything nice Sweetness sprinkles, a drop of magic, and princess beauty." Autumn thinks they're redundant. I think they're full of shit, and actually have to kill princesses in order to harvest the ingredients for their plastic cookies.

Autumn likes Jason Mraz. She got really excited when in his music video he went to Prague, because we went to Prague. In Prague, we didn't do much of anything. We went to a shiny store, located Salvador Dali, and slept among the pigeons and burning pizza. In fact, our best friend Carmen burnt her cleavage with the pizza. She was pretty glad I was over prepared and had burn ointment. Autumn says it's because I was a walking pharmaceutical facility.

But I digress. Autumn's pretty. Like seriously. Autumn says she'll get creeped out by all my secret followers, but everyone should know that she's kind of gorgeous, if not a little bit awkward. She laughed that. I hope she thinks I'm kidding. "Are you?" "No."

I like Autumn's hairstyle. Not really, because she's being silly, but she has pretty dark hair that curly and she just hit me with.

She's gonna be a super graphic designer by day, and Broadway actress by night. I'm excited.

She also thought that the word "Poor" was spelled with three zeros. and got stupider.

So Autumn is cute.

...I'm emotionally disturbed by the fact one of my friends cut his hair.

So I should probably write a little history on him (should I rename him?) He goes to Jew camp. I met him in Tzofim, so I guess we were...14. We had made friends with Miriam, who he dated first session, but he broke up with her (I kid you not) because he wanted to spend more time with his guitar. I mean don't get me wrong, this kids a guitar genius, but really? So he used to wear a red bandanna in his hair. Everyday.

As we got older, his hair got longer. He's such an oxymoron. He had long hair, went to LaGuirdia (audition for guitar and art, got in for art, even though he can't draw), lived in the city, went to hippie Jew arts camp, and is our one republican. Like doesn't believe in global warming. He has hair down to his elbows and is mad skinny, so he looks like a girl from the back.

Also, he looks real sketchy. Like in Israel all the time he would get pulled to the side for security checks. And when we did Machon (CIT) interviews, they pulled him aside to tell him that this wasn't all fun and games. He's not any better or worse behaved then the rest of us (on second thought, probably better).

But now his hair is normal looking. and I feel like his long hair was a part of what made him different. Like me, I have long hair because I like that it's different. No matter how many people cut all their hair off or what's in or out of style, I have my long hair. But now he chopped off a good chunk of my adolecences.

It's silly, and selfish, but I want his long hair back.

...age three is the best age to live in Disneyland

My first ever memory is the plane ride to California when I was two. We lived there until I went to kindergarden when I was five. I remember the three houses we stayed in, and my two pre-schools (I got moved from the first one for kind of being a bully. That’ll probably be a later “why”) and my mother driving and getting engaged when I was three and almost getting eaten by an ostrich on the ostrich farm down the street. Arguably, the best thing about living in California was living 15 minutes away from Disneyland. When you went to the park when you were little, I went to toontown. We would get year passes, and my driver’s permit reminds me of them. I’m a little bit bigger now. Hey, don’t laugh at me!

Here’s why it’s awesome to be a regular at Disneyland: (prepare yourself, I’m making a list)

1. the characters: I don't mean the crazy people around although believe me tourists are some of the funniest people in the world (this is also true of New York City. I don't understand how people can just stop and look straight up in the middle of a sidewalk.) But seriously, on rainy days Mickey and I would chill and watch TV. Aladdin knew me by name, and would greet me which made most of the other kids jealous. Susie mouse had a thing for my Dad (and to this day we don't know if it was a guy or girl playing mousie dear). And the first Snow White who went of to Disney Tokyo took a picture of me. So yeah. I was tight with princesses as a little kid.

2. You get to be right a lot: especially as a three year old, it's pretty fun when a family is fighting over getting around the park, and you walk over and point someting out, and they don't believe, and you see them in the same place arguing about an hour later. Also there was some girl who was waiting on line and stuck her head through the bars of the divider even though I said it was a bad idea. I got a pretty good I-told-you-so when the fire department was trying to get her face out.

3. It totally toughens you up: like you can't have a fear of crowds. And nothing scares you after you've been on the snow white and pinochio and jungle safari rides as a two year old a couple times. Also, I learned not to play on the ropes that create the lines because I was swinging on one and flipped over, so I'd like to say I'm a little more careful with those now. And you get lost once and a while and it's okay. You don't panic anymore. You can't be scared of any strangers or anything because everyone in the freaking park you live in you don't know. I don't fear creepers because you'd think disney was crawling with them, but I never once felt endangered. I also almost got my teeth knocked out on the roger rabbit ride.

4. You get extensive disney knowledge: I have an audition for Beauty and the Beast friday and I know pretty much every word because the show went up in Disneyland before broadway. I can sing the small world song on a loop just to torture someone. And I know every character ever, and like every movie, and can own you in any disney trivia.


So moral of the story, if you are ages 3-5 please move to Disneyland. Also, I suggest you stop reading this blog.

...I'd rather weigh too much than not enough

So some days I feel like there's an alternate universe where fat is the standard of pretty and the proverbial they will find our world and be utterly confused. Because, really, it makes no sense. In Hawaii and other weird isolated islands when you get old you're supposed get fat as a sign of wealth. If food costs money, and poor people starve, why isn't being plump a status symbol? One day these alternate fat people are going to land and be like "ew, put those bones away..."

I'm ranting. there's a reason.

see, I'm in this play and we're in hell week. Now, no one likes doing costumes (it's like the dress up game from hell, where you have no choice and the stakes are raised by being stuck with safety pins) but my little sister is thirteen and has fairly big boobs for it and isn't as small as me. So none of the costumes fit over her boobs (she wasn't the only person this happened to.) When she told the director this, she said "It's not your boobs. You're going to have to do some sit ups if you want to fit into any of these dresses."

And it's a pretty good thing we don't own a flame thrower, because my mother would be roasting marshmallows on a burning skinny woman.

that was graphic. I'm kind of mad. Weight is just so...insubstantial. Like there are two extremes, being very thin and very big. But to society, very thin is very much more accept (and god do I hate to be accepted.) I'd rather be too fat. Because guess what, I'd get to eat more.

...I've resolved to be less awkward (or at least take chances)

So I'm an awkward kid. I'm a dork with a small amount of filters. I mean, I'm a theater kid that goes to Jew camp. I'm no stranger to awkward.

But I always thought I had courage, at least. Said what I wanted to say.

So let me preface this story by telling you that I live in a VERY small town. Like a square mile. So everyone knows everyone. Like if someone cuts you off in the school parking lot, you can tell their mommy. But so I was in the local hub and this kid who's in college now walks in.

Now, my mother is convinced that someday this kid and I will get married. We've known each other as long as we've done theater, which is forever.

So he walks in and I don't get up or say hi or anything, because let me reiterate: I AM AN AWKWARD KID. At the moment he walks out, I think to myself, "I will never live this down."

So the next day his little brother throws a water bottle at my little sister, and says "That's for being [insert my name here]'s sister. And she's like "Why?" and the little brother goes "Because my brother's really upset that your sister didn't say hi to him yesterday."

So I'm making a frustrated noise, in case you couldn't tell.

Why is that my fault? He didn't say hi either! He's had a girlfriend for years, and he's a college kid, and suddenly I'M the awkward kid.

So not only am I awkward, but I attract awkward people. My mother just validated this.

So now I'm going to try not to be one of those people.

I'm completely prepared to utterly fail.

...well, for one, I'm starting a blog.

Well, firstly, blog is just really fun to say.

So, I have this best friend. And we might as well be sisters except for the fact that she lives like three hours away, which sucks. But anyhow, she made a blog. It's a blog of lists, and it's amazing. So since she did it, and I want to be just like her when I grow up, I decided to make a blog.

And at first, it was really lame, because I was just gonna ramble. But this 100 reasons why, just sounds like a good idea.

So everyday (ish) I'm going to explain why I feel or did something. Kind of cool, huh? I guess so.

Blogging seems like a good idea, anyway. Even though I always sucked royally at keeping diaries because I'm just overall awful at thinking linearly. And I'm all over the place. But when I was in like 6th grade I had a diary, except I didn't want to write anything bad. Guess what? It sucked (hey that kind of rhymed.) Because now I know that you can't just have the sun without the rain because then all the plants would die and we'd all die and it be the dinosaurs all over again.

So this is how I feel...