Monday

August 31


This week Steve and I are hanging out and watching movies everyday. Today we watched Watchmen. I liked it a lot, though I must say it was made more enjoyable by our nonsensical jokes that no one else finds funny and are possibly offended by. We also had dinner with my parents, drank wine, and video chatted with various friends who are in college right now and whose lives are completely foreign to us. In a way, Steve and I are the last ones to savoring our childhoods. While our friends have moved on and are adjusting to their new lives, we remain stuck in this old one, feeling not quite like we belong in it but also certain we don't yet belong in the future. It's a sort of suspended animation. We're still eating food cooked by our moms and we have nothing to be worried about or unsettled by. While we mock our situations and look forward to next week with eager anticipation, it would be a lie to say we aren't having fun. I'm not doubting that I'll enjoy college, but it will be nice to look back on this week in the future and remember feeling completely comfortable and content sitting on my parents' couch with Steve, laughing until we can't breathe over a joke I don't even remember now.

The song of the day is "Effigy" by Andrew Bird.

Sunday

August 30

Today I did nothing for the majority of the day, and then I packed a little bit. I realized I have a lot less to pack than I thought I did. I thought I was going to need a Uhaul but turns out a car is going to suffice. I tried to make a bulletin board for my dorm. I gathered a couple pictures I had laying around including one of Lanny, Michela and me we took at a mall photobooth in December during a blizzard. Actually it was Michela's birthday. The point is, I was bad at organizing the bulletin board and gave up. I don't really have the decorator gene and I predict my dorm room to be an assortment of arbitrary colors and patterns and a lot of blank space. Later, Steve and Lauren came over and we watched Adventureland. We also video chatted Kathryn and Kelsey and Michela. Video chatting is so much fun and the best. Wow, I just did a blog recap of my day, didn't I. A blogcap if you will. Blogcat.

I think the hardest transition for me going into college is going to be wearing articles of clothing to sleep that are presentable to the public. Meaning that now I sleep in XL nightgowns from my grandmother, and soon I'm going to have to wear matching Aerie ensembles and act like nothing's weird about it. The song of the day is "Pale Blue Eyes" by the Velvet Underground. I need a haircut.

Saturday

August 29


Today I woke up at eight thirty and it felt like the earliest I had been awake all summer. It wasn't at all, I've woken up at six fifty every farmland day, but something about the combination of dark cold and rainy made me feel like I was getting up for the first day of high school. It was awful. There couldn't be much worse than going to high school after already having been at high school for four years. Good thing most people don't have to do that. 

Kathryn picked me up and we drove to have a send-off breakfast for Lanny and Michela. I'm going to miss them both a lot. Their personalities are huge presences in my life, they both just have an ability to attract friendships. I started getting really excited for both of them, partially because they're moving to New York City but mostly just because they're going to college. Did I mention I'm ready?

Kathryn gave me a bracelet that says "Foxy B" and my mom liked it and called me a Foxy B. I pointed out to her what Foxy B meant, but it did little to alter her already formed opinion. Today I wore a sweatshirt and socks. I hate winter. This better not have been it for hot weather of 2009. I think I have seasonal affective disorder.

Oh the song of the day is "Gotholympians" by Andrew Bird. I dedicate this song of the day to Kelsey, who gave me "Fingerlings." I listened to this album today when it was raining hard and I played it really loud on my laptop and put on that visualizer thing that makes cool colors and designs and I just stared at it and thought about how much I like music. 

Friday

August 28


I hope that no one at college gets an impression that I think I know how to play guitar because I certainly do not. I don't really know what to say right now. Most of my friends are gone now, and I'm ready to leave! It feels irrelevant to be here. I will probably feel this even stronger tomorrow. 

It's raining a lot here. I guess a couple weeks of sunshine are all we're alloted these days, but no complaints, rain is cleansing.

The song of the day is "A Song for You" by Alexi Murdoch.

Thursday

August 27


Sorry about my hiatus. I misplaced my memory card, and without a picture, I couldn't bring myself to blog. It made me really distressed. Blogging has become sort of a habit for me, I've done it almost every day this year. This picture is of the top of Mt. Wachusett. I don't like how little time it takes to drive up to the summit. It completely degrades Wachusett's right to stand above humans. I remember being so upset at the tourists I encountered when I climbed Mt. Washington. There I was, in achievement of perhaps the greatest feat of my life to date, and these people were smothering my accomplishment in a cloud of exhaust from their SUVs. Mountains, in the grand scheme of things, deserve to be taller than people.

I miss my friends. It feels weird that I'm still here and I'm still hanging out with people; shouldn't I be at school already? I've been feeling more and more excited lately, and at the same time, I am really going to miss this bed. I think with every goodbye - about two a day now - I am more and more ready to leave. Today I thought I was dying. Not in a melodramatic way though, I just silently was preparing myself for the possibility of death. When I woke up I felt incredibly dizzy. This isn't too out of the ordinary for me, but when my neck started feeling stiff and in pain, paranoia encroached and I quietly convinced myself that I had contracted bacterial meningitis and was going to die. And the saddest damn thing was, during the time I was dying, which was only about an hour, I couldn't focus on anything except the fear of it all. I tried to enjoy the little life I had left, tried to pay close attention to the way my house smells or the sunlit green forest in my back yard, but my mind kept reverting back panicking over my oncoming doom. I hope that on the day I actually am dying, and no one likes to think about this, I can't help but obsess over the beauty of everything, everywhere around me. If I think about it that way, then it doesn't seem so much like something to fear.

All I listened to all day was Sufjan Stevens Christmas songs. There's nothing like Christmas in August. I don't even know what that last sentence meant. Christmas in July or June would be pretty similar to Christmas in August. Anyways, the song of the day is "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" by some traditional artist, revised by Sufjan Stevens.

I'm back!

Monday

August 24


Tomorrow morning at 9 my sister and I are having done a professionally taken photo of ourselves. I don't know why, and this fact just occurred to me. I still can't stop listening to Neutral Milk Hotel. What's worse, I can't stop playing Neutral Milk Hotel on the guitar, and I'm still really bad at guitar. I'm starting to think they might just be an illusion. I mean it would make sense. They only existed as a band for a very short time, wrote an incredibly beautiful album mostly about something that happened half a century earlier, and then fell off the face of the planet. Also, what does "Neutral Milk Hotel" mean? Makes no sense unless you try really hard, like one of Kathryn's poems. See, they must be an illusion.

Having a laptop for the first time is dangerous because it guarantees that I can just be on the computer any time I want in any place I want. I'm hungry. Goodbyes are coming every day now. Maybe I'll develop a sort of shield that prevents me completely from being affected by sadness and missing people. Actually I'm pretty sure that already exists, but I can't think of what its called right now.

If you wanted to know, I found Krazy glue and now my broken shards are glued together. So the finished product looks decent, if not nice, at least for now. The song of the day is "Like Dylan in the Movies" by Belle and Sebastian, even though I really wanted it to be "Holland 1945" by Neutral Milk Hotel.

August 23


This is a view from the parking  of Farmland, right before a storm. It mostly rains at Farmland right after I'm done working so it doesn't close and I don't get to leave early. I told my boss it's my last week of work and she hugged me and gave me two coupons for Papa Gino's which are two very unexpected actions.

Today was a long, sad day. I said goodbye to Liz and then later I picked up the phone to call her and see what she was doing and when the realization hit me it was a long and sad one. I've been re-appreciating the beauty of "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" for like the fifth time. It's some of the only music with the power to make me cry at its lyrics. The song of the day is "Two Headed Boy Part 2." Maybe this song, the beautiful sublimity of thunderstorm clouds, not being able to talk about it, and saying goodbye to my best friend, is what made me feel so simultaneously heavy and empty today. I think I'll remember it for a while.

When you make a mistake that breaks something you have to pick up the pieces and arrange them back the way they were, and try to glue them or hold them in position or whatever makes them look most like they looked before. No matter how hard you try to put them back there will still be fault lines that serve as reminders of being broken. But even with fault lines, which are rather unsightly, it's better than if they were splayed out and shattered on the floor, and when you walked by them you didn't pick them up but just meticulously placed your steps so you didn't step on any and cut yourself. 

Groping blindly in the dark, how do I know what is the right and what is the mistake?

August 22


A beautiful day filled with nature and water and mistakes and love. 

In my dreams you're alive and you're crying
As your mouth moves in mine, soft and sweet
Rings of flowers around your eyes and I'll love you 
For the rest of your life

Friday

August 21

Tomorrow is Liz's last day home. It's hard, impossible in fact, for me to accept that I only have one more day with my best friend before we separate for who knows how long. It would be easier if I was leaving too, but I still have what feels like so much time here. And I don't really know what to do with it other than devote time and energy on mental scenarios of what college will be like. I'm getting sick of all this waiting and guessing. I just want to know what it's really going to be like. 

Farmland wasn't so bad today because I fed the park with Anna Chase and it sucked up three of the hardest hours of the day. It's amazing how fast time goes by when you're talking to another farmer, granted they're not stupid and when they talk to you they look at you instead of past you with their eyes glazed over. I like Anna. I gave a pony ride to a five year old boy named Max. Max was pretty average looking except for circular glasses that magnified his eyeballs to look approximately 1.5 times their size. So Max wasn't really that average looking, actually. As our pony ride commenced I begun firing my run-of-the-mill questions;

What's your name?
Max.
How old are you Max?
My bathing suit has two ties.
That's awesome. What does it look like?
It's green. And with black stripes and white stripes. 
Oh, cool. Is green your favorite color?
No, every color is my favorite.
The whole rainbow?
Yeah. Except not pink.
Why not pink?
It's too pinky.

At that moment in time I realized it would have been so satisfying if I had made hearing the word "pinky" my goal of that day. Today there was a tornado watch and I couldn't find my iPod so there is no song of the day unless you count what I listened to on the radio, which was Alanis Morissette.

Thursday

August 20

This is my first time blogging on my new laptop. It's so cool, I've never been on the internet in my bedroom before. Today I saw 500 Days of Summer. I can't remember the last time I identified so much with a movie. It was really well filmed and the whole way through I kept thinking how important its message was. I guess you just have to see it to know what I'm talking about. 

I don't really have much else to say right now. I'm feeling kind of emotionally numb. 

Yet on the other hand, there is happiness.

Wednesday

August 19

I have devised a scale of levels that measure excitement for college. I go through various levels in one day and all my friends are at different levels. Here is the list:

10 - Extreme excitement, intense desire to be immediately at college and away from home
9 - Very happy and excited for the future
8 - Optimistic that college will be a good experience, once situated
7 - Aware of the highs and lows of college, but overly looking forward to it
6 - In a state of acceptance, exited but recognizing worries
5 - Dealing simultaneously with rational worries and flickers of excitement
4 - Optimistic demeanor fronts internal feelings of anxiety and sadness 
3 - Worries consume thoughts, searching for positive aspects to college and finding little
2 - Morose outlook on life, possibly depressed
1 - Ultimate dread, clinically depressed, no reason to wake up in the morning

On an unrelated note, today was the first time all year I have had the pleasure of being hot and jumping into water to cool off. I'm usually just hot with no water or in water and cold. Today the lake was perfect and I felt the unburdened freedom of a day without plans, stretched out in front of me like untarnished white marble. I could do anything I want with it. Maybe it was so good because I know these days won't come around for much longer at all. It's bittersweet (I hate that word).

The song of the day is "Star Witness" by Neko Case. The falling of pieces on my chessboard of friends has begun, and I'm feeling the emptiness peering out at me from the edge of my periphery.



Tuesday

August 18


My birthday! Now I'm an adult. All I can say is that I am shocked and flattered by the consideration and love that my friends routinely spill forth to me. The words "thank you" pale in comparison to my real feelings of gratitude, which of course cannot be explained through language and thus will only ever be fully known to me. It is absolutely wonderful to feel loved, and most especially by people whom you love in return so greatly that it hurts to imagine a time where you will be without them.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you! I love all of you!

Monday

August 17

I meant to blog before I turned eighteen so I could document my last day of being seventeen, which was by coincidence, the seventeenth. Seventeen on the seventeenth and eighteen on the eighteenth, as I pointed out to my disinterested coworkers at Farmland today. I love my birthday. Unfortunately that is something to be ashamed of since nobody likes to hear you talk about yourself all day even if it is your birthday. Tonight when we waited for the clock to strike midnight on the sidewalk of Shrewsbury Street it was the most perfect temperature and my mom texted me saying, "18 years ago tonight you started being born." How nostalgic. Now I'm ready for my birthday of the year oh nine. The song of the day is "Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl" by Broken Social Scene. I'm listening to it right now with Liz, and she is leaning her head back on the chair.

Bleachin' your teeth, smilin' flash, talking trash, under my window

Sunday

August 16


Today when I came home after spending ten hours at Farmland and forty minutes driving, I ran a cold shower and sat down on the floor of the tub under the water and stayed there until I stopped feeling insufferably hot. What a long day. I tried to fit as many chicks as I could in one hand and show them to little kids and tell them it was one chick with multiple heads. I learned a cool fact about chicks. If you turn them over on their backs they instantly fall asleep. I don't understand this at all but I tried it all day. Also my throat hurts.

The song of the day is "By Torpedo or Crohn's" by Why?. My iPod tape adapter is in Steve's grandfather's car so when I drove home today I had the option of listening to the Fray on the radio or nothing. So I listened to nothing and rolled the windows down and the breeze did relative wonders for my aching head. I think between the hours of six and eight on hot summer nights are my favorite hours of any time of year. Everything is so colorful and beautiful. I wanted so badly to document how great the world felt for a couple minutes tonight, driving through fields in Princeton and Sterling. But I knew photography wouldn't do it justice, unless somebody invented a kind of photography that captured temperature and smells. I don't want to go back to that place ever again. But I'm going to.

Only evil live to see their own likeness in stone
(my brother said that)

Saturday

August 15


My day was filled with productive pursuits. I think I found closure with a lot of people today. Liz and I and Abby and Abi re-united our "foursie" for the last time before college. We had to say goodbye to Abi Wilson and everything started to hit me hard. I thought I had a lot more time to say goodbye. Next week even more goodbyes will start filtering in. My dad is painting the deck red. Before we had our new deck, we had an old one that looked exactly like it only it had been chewed up by carpenter ants. It was painted this same rust color and when I see our new deck painted red, it might remind me of the way things were. I have two more days of being seventeen.

The red isn't the red we painted it's

 just 

rust

August 14


My internet broke so I am writing this from today, which on August 14 was tomorrow, if you know what I mean. I thought I didn't remember what I did on this day, but turns out I can remember with remarkably little effort. I went to Farmland and stood in direct sunlight during the hottest hours of the day and subsequently had a headache until I went to sleep that night. I also swam out to the dock on Steve's lake and talked with Liz and Steve for an hour. Last winter, when I imagined the end to this summer, I imagined partaking in many one-on-one talks with my close friends, perhaps for closure. I imagined them occurring on swinging benches outside of houses. Most of my friends don't have swinging benches, but I think my prediction was otherwise correct. Things are starting to wind down around here.

Thursday

August 13


Today was a completely fun and non-regrettable day at the beach. For some reason I only go to the beach when it's cloudy; this may be because it is cloudy way more often than sunny. But it was perfect today because it cleared up and the blue sky said hi to us and we swam in the water and fell asleep on the sand and bought candy and drove home and laid around and then went bowling. Now I am making a list of things to buy for college which is becoming a list of things I use in my everyday life. I just realized I am still pretty sandy, woops. Tomorrow I'm working at Farmland half the day, I hope my boss doesn't get mad at me. The song of the day is "A Wish" by Gregory & the Hawk. I like being with my friends. I wish I had more time with them.

Wednesday

August 12


You know that summer's on the outs when the thought of winter isn't cringe-worthy anymore. Not to say I'm excited or anything. Tomorrow we're going to the beach and it's going to be really fun. I realize that this is the last week of summer that all of my friends are still here. Next week, they start to filter away one by one. I will be the last one at home. Even my sister starts school before I do. I'm going to feel like the only one left alive. Depressing. Anyways, it's my birthday next Tuesday. Every year my birthday is after all my friends have already had theirs, so it's not even a big deal when I become one year older. This year is cool because I'll be 18 on the 18th. Today Liz showed me all the stuff she bought for college and it made me excited to start writing a list. I would do it now if I wasn't already going to bed. The song of the day is "Wasted & Ready" by Ben Kweller. 

My throat hurts weird. Stella lost three pounds, which doesn't seem noteworthy until you consider that it was one fourth of her total weight.

Tuesday

August 11


I love weather. Today I did a lot of pointless endeavors. I went to get my third Gardisil shot only to learn that it was actually two weeks too early, and then I went to the Verizon store, hated every phone available to replace my sick and dying one, and left. The song of the day is "So Everyone" by Bonnie "Prince" Billy.

At home I napped on the living room couch for three hours. I had bizarre and vivid dreams. In the most predominant one, I was holding a large gathering in my driveway in the middle of an intense rainstorm. I decided to drive my car down the driveway and into the carport, with Zach Kent in the passenger seat. As I drove the length of the driveway, I lost control of the car and it lumbered off the pavement and onto the dirt and brush on the left side. Moving slowly like a grazing animal, the car completed a series of revolutions, sliding on the watery earth. But we weren't worried. We casually went through the motions of using the emergency break and shifting gears, both aware that the car would continue to move through air and earth and water and would eventually drive off the steep drop at the end of my driveway. And we both knew that ultimately, we would be okay. When we finally approached the drop, we proposed to each other the idea of jumping out. As wheels touched the ground for the last time and the massive mechanic animal tipped over the edge of the earth, Zach and I fell out of its doors and tumbled gracefully and slowly into the ethereal and waterlogged forest, luminous under the sunlight. The painful impact we could have encountered never came and we had no fear of being hurt or even of dying. Immediately before I woke up, I left my arms and legs and hands below me, on the ground, as I thrust towards heaven my chest and heart, opened my mouth and eyes, and drank in the sunlight that bursted through the bright wet evergreens.

Monday

August 10


The word "stifling," to me, connotes "suffocating," and both of these adjectives are relevant in describing the heat that was today. I took this picture before I went to work in the morning, and although the sun didn't reach its peak until hours later, the heat was already saturating the air in the form of vaporous rays of light. The heat was not abstract but a concrete presence: able to be not only felt but seen. Farmland made me so tired. It wasn't an abnormally bad day though because I talked to a lot of people, saw a chick hatch, told an interested couple every fact I know about Poitou Donkeys, and sprayed a baby alpaca with a hose to cool him down. After work it took me a while to feel completely like I had beaten the threat of heatstroke. 

Lately I've been feeling the weight of my trivial (but maybe not so much) burdens increase every day. Today was the first time in a long while I haven't felt stifled by worries and anxious anticipation, which was ironic because I was so stifled by the temperature. I sweated off my confusion and my little pieces of sadness, sprinkled around and shared. Today I feel happy and new and not afraid. Sorry I'm being so vague, but this is just a photo blog anyways. I have three days off from work, and I will spend them by being not-at-Farmland. What a great feeling.

Today I gave a guitar performance and the bad news is I still can't play guitar. Oh well. It's so hot, that's the problem.

The song of the day is "Don't Be Scared" by Andrew Bird.

Sunday

August 9


I keep thinking that sleep will help clear my mind and order my thoughts but it never does. Or maybe it's that I never seem to find quite enough sleep. Things are starting to go faster than I'd like them to. For example, Liz leaves for college in two weeks. When did this happen? When did it become so there are two weeks left of her summer? I'm not ready at all and I don't know when I will be. What if I'm never ready and I have to leave for college anyways? I'm so tired. This summer was the best of my life, but I really am so tired. And my brain is mush and I don't know what making me happy or sad or both and I'm going to go to sleep but then wake up too early, for work, and pretend to be happier than I am all day.

It's all of the good that won't come out of me
And how eventually my mouth will just turn to dust
If I don't tell you quick
Standing here on this frozen lake

August 7

Thursday

August 6


Today I babysat for most of the day and it was fun. We went to Friendly's on the condition Livi and Eli would pay for their ice cream with their allowances. Eli whined about this decision the whole way there because he had been saving up his money for a long time and didn't want to spend any of it. He only had four dollars and a small handful of pennies. I ended up paying for half of his ice cream, and when he wasn't looking, dumping most of my change into his wallet so he only actually paid about seventy five cents. 

Here is the truth: I want to be done working at Farmland. I feel like I wasn't even a real employee there this summer because I was so unattached. The song of the day is "In The Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel, because I learned to play it on the guitar. And by that I mean I learned a progression of four chords and when I am done playing one chord, it takes me about five seconds of silence to find the next. But my mom said in passing, "Hey, that actually sounds like something!" so I guess I am making music sense now.

Wednesday

August 5


August 5 doesn't really matter to anyone, and I don't know anyone who'd refute that statement. I forgot to announce that I had blogged 200 times when it was true; now I've blogged somewhere around 216 times. That means I am approximately 28 days away from being two thirds done blogging, which means this year is two thirds over. On a completely unrelated note, the only productive things I did today were watching So You Think You Can Dance, with Liz and Steve and Ann, and painting my toenails. Clearly my definition of productive has shifted a little since the school year. I am actually very excited to return to that whole intellectual stimulation thing.

I am trying not to let myself become really stressed out by a lot of little things. It's not an easy task. The song of the day is "Easy" by Deer Tick. I can't decide if I feel like my summer is passing slowly or rapidly. It seems like one week is such a huge unit of time, because so much changes in one week, but at the same time, weeks fly by. I don't want this to end and everyone's starting to talk like it's over already.

August 4


In the end, what really defines my year is taking pictures while driving. It's a habit which everyone would benefit from my quitting. Today was my dad's birthday. I drove from my guitar lesson to meet my parents at the Bean Counter to celebrate. I didn't have anything to listen to because I forgot my iPod at home. My mom has recently unearthed a Backstreet Boys cassette and has brought it into the car, believing it to be of use to someone driving it. Last night, with nothing to listen to, the cassette struck me not as a piece of meaningless scenery, as it usually does, but something I might actually consider listening to, if nothing else than to pass the time. I saw it as something detrimental and maybe even harmful, but provoking curiosity. Maybe a similar situation to one in which I arose every morning to find a cigarette and lighter on my kitchen table. While I would never consciously plan to smoke it, I might just decide to out of curiosity and of sheer convenience. So, long story short, I listened to the Backstreet Boys. It's the first time in a while I've not had even a slight inkling of pride at knowing every word on an album.

Sometimes I wish I could
Turn back time, 
impossible as it may seem
But I wish I could
So that
Baby
Quit playin' games with my heart

Oh, to be so eloquent!

Monday

August 3


Do you ever feel so disorganized that the disorganization and disorder pollutes your otherwise orderly mind? Tonight, before I fall asleep, I will lay awake in my bed and think, like I always do. But tonight I will mentally make a list of things to think about during this time, so I don't waste any thinking time on the massive amounts of clutter in my thoughts. This might be the first time I've blogged while being at least partially asleep. A combination of very little sleep last night and nine hours of what is considered by the majority of ordinary Americans to be manual labor is making it extraordinarily difficult for me to keep my eyelids from blocking my vision. 

This weekend, all of it, was so much fun that I don't even think it's fair. Like I should share my fun next time I have so much. Liz and I were together for four days straight and didn't once regret it. I should probably come up with a sentiment with which to wrap up this post, but instead, I think I'll go to sleep.

August 2


His name is Andrew Tobiassen and he is in Deer Tick. I really wanted to go talk to him when he was standing under the tent when everything was closing but I would have nothing to say since I don't actually listen to Deer Tick. I'm pretty sure we made eye contact though.

August 1


It's August whaaaat?! Also, this is Fleet Foxes.

July 31

July 30