darling you've got to let me know

So, on the bus ride home I get sort of a scenic tour of the western... perhaps eastern... side of the town. Which is the empty side. The side bordering The Town. Among the things I saw today, and indeed every day, is the field of abandoned duplexes that will become if not already meth labs. Mark my words. These duplexes could be the literally most depressing thing in the state. It's just a matter of time before one of those motherfuckers explodes and mortally wounds a neighboring three year old hispanic girl and her eight year old brother who has to take care of her because their single mother works at the local Hooters.
Another thing I see is a trailer that looks abandoned but isn't because there's a car parked outside. What makes this particular shitty trailer notable is the fact there there are at least half a dozen gallon bleach bottles on the lawn. This is a fairly new development and I have to wonder if perhaps the tenant- an arthritic elderly man- has offed himself by drinking several gallons of bleach and tossing them out on the lawn? I wonder if his body is still sitting in the La-Z-Boy in front of the television, rotting, because no one cares enough to report him missing.
I also see a yard populated by chickens, but for the longest time I was unable to determine that the white masses were, in fact, chickens. From the distance away from the road they look rather like white plastic bags, scattered across the ground and snagged on tree branches.
As a completely unrelated note, I feel that mothers are supposed to impart these domestic maxims to their daughters- like, never mix black and brown, always trim the stems of flowers diagonally, salt your pasta water. And I feel like I never learned anything of the sort from my own mother- I learned all of those things from magazines. But I have no idea how I missed those lessons. It's possible, likely even, that my mother never bothered to dispense such wisdom, but I don't know why she wouldn't. Often, she seems supernaturally preoccupied with mothering me. Perhaps, she thinks, as she does now, that I already know what she is going to tell me. And I often do. But it's still sort of sad. I'm often rather preoccupied with the idea of childhood, comparing my own to the ideal. I guess I have a bit of a Freudian streak.

dead kings, many things i can't define

Sometimes people ask that question, 'If you could be in any decade, which one would you choose?' and usually I reply with some snarky like, 'I'd hope to live more than a decade.' But actually, I would probably say the Victorian era. Because, it's sort of beautiful and romantic, I think. If you've ever read Ragtime, you know what I mean. The clothes, of course. There's just something intangible about it that just seems sort of lovely to me. Undoubtedly, if I were to actually say this, someone would say something like, 'Also, cholera, consumption, and typhus.' To that person (who is sort of me): Fuck you.
Just kidding. I still adore you.
Sometimes I feel like my county has more abandoned shacks than actual houses. They're sort of incredible, peppering fields and hiding in woods. I always wonder if someone once lived there. I like to imagine something like a Laura Ingalls Wilder novel- which I adored, as a child. I read all of them- there's something incredible about that concept of such a simple lifestyle.
Lately I've been feeling these pangs of nostalgia for my childhood. It's sort of heartbreaking how much I've forgotten- the names of my stuffed animals, neopets passwords, the plots of my favorite books. Even more awful, when I try to go back and find these stuffed animals, books, or tiny slips of paper, I realize that I discarded them when I went through that phase- fifth or sixth grade, a time where you are trying so, so hard to grow up. So it's sort of depressing when I realize, after manically digging through my closet, that I have actually gotten rid of all my favorite kids books- Little House on the Praire series, Nancy Drew, Narnia, Phillip Pullman. I also feel sort of guilty in an abstract sense.
Speaking of eclectic tastes:
I am in love with Augusten Burroughs. Burroughs, for the uninitiated, is a memoirist. His work, Magical Thinking, represents my first foray into adult fiction. I was eight. It felt as though I had stepped into another world. Suddenly, I saw the world from the perspective of a middle-aged gay man who lives in Manhattan. I devoured it in an hour and it catalysed my transition into adolescence. I now had my first inkling of cocaine, oral sex, and advertising executives. I guess I have a particular interest in the lives of elderly, sophisticated gay men.
Speaking of MY CHILDHOOD, a subject I can endlessly pontificate on, goldfish. Fish, generally, sort of terrify me, which I think we can probably trace back to the time when I actually owned two goldfish- their names were Buddy and Goldy. Buddy was a boy, and Goldy was a girl. Naturally, I loved Goldy more because she was prettier. Anyway, they died, as fish often do, and I. was. traumatized. It was my one of my first brushes with the death of a loved one, and I was horrified! Absolutely horrified. Now I cannot look at a goldfish- or think of my beloved first pets- without thinking of them decaying. In the garden. Behind my house. Anyway, this has become a running theme in my life- first with caterpillars (When I was six, I kept several of them in a terrarium until they died a few days later) which I cannot think of without gagging. Then with frogs- my grandparents, who live at the beach, like to go for walks. To condense a rather long story, there were what seemed like hundreds of dead, squished frogs in the road. And now I'm terrified of frogs. In fact, I literally cannot go for a walk barefoot outside without being concerned I will step on and kill one. Next, lizards. When I was eight I had a pet green anole for about a year. His name was Scampers. He died of heart failure RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. I am now afraid of lizards. Clearly, this is an ongoing trend. Hopefully, my darling pet cat will never die, because I fear that I will develop a phobia of cats, after such an event. Which would be very sad, because I adore cats. I also adore MY cat, and will probably cry for months after her inevitable departure to cat heaven. Which I sort of childishly believe in. (shh.)

go grab your guns and your switchblade knives

Today, is, possibly, the worst Valentine's day I have ever had. Because today is one of the worst days I have had, in a while. Not due to romantic things, of course. I am single and totally okay with that. The issue is, my english teacher HATES ME.
"Again?" you might ask? Yes. Again.
The awful part is, I thought she LIKED me. I did. But today, she asks me to SEE HER AFTER CLASS. Never, in the history in my life, has a teacher wanted me to see them after class for a negative reason. That is not an exaggeration. So I see her after class. And she tells me that she has been finding my behaviour to be 'rude' and 'passive aggressive.' WHAT? WHAT? WHY...? NO.
I don't even, I just. I'm not! I am, totally, not rude or passive aggressive in her class. Ever. So, as she's sitting there telling me she ought to report me to the office for disrespectful behaviour towards a staff member and I'm trying not to cry, I'm literally trying to figure out where she is getting this completely ass-backwards impression from. And the only thing I can think of is the sorts of questions I ask in class. Like, I once asked 'Why does the author's opinion matter?' and I guess maybe she could construe that as disrespectful but it TOTALLY WASN'T. I literally want to know why the author's opinion matters. Also, I've noted that sometimes teachers can be off-put by me wanting to know what their personal opinion is, if the topic interests me. So... I guess, I don't even know. Because, in my opinion, reading is more to extract your own message, and I don't think it matters what the author INTENDED the message to be. So I wanted to know what her take on that was, because, you know, I RESPECT her.
Sorry for the weird and innapropriate use of capitalization here, I'm totally regressing back into a 12-year-old speech pattern. BECAUSE OF MY OUTRAGE. I'm just. I'm completely horrified. I'm shocked and chagrined! as Cenk Uygur would say. I just. Oh my god. I cannot. Even.
This has never, ever happened to me before! This hasn't even happened with a person, much less a teacher. I just. I. Why? Why is this happening to me? And now I have to be in her English class for the rest of the semester. And know that she doesn't like me the entire time.
So, what am I supposed to do? I think I'll probably end up just sitting there, sullenly, the entire class and never ask a single question or inject my personality into a single essay. I feel like I am physically having a panic attack. I. Oh my god. What if she tells my QUIZBOWL COACH? He is also an English teacher. What if she says, 'Oh my god, I have this problem child who is wildly disrespectful and her name is Frances.' and then my Quizbowl coach fires me. From quizbowl. Oh, my god.
I... probably, have other things to say right now, but I can't think of them. Because I feel physically ill and am probably going to cry at some point today.
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up

Hey, hi, hello. I have recently surpassed 1,000 total page views. Here. Which, is pretty cool and pretty creepy. But mostly pretty cool.
Anyway... I am a graduate of the standard North Carolina classroom driver's education program. yayyyy. I don't really. Know. Things that happened in driver's ed include police officers thinking that I am already drunk before putting on the drunk goggles because I am, apparently, terrible at walking. They didn't really think I was drunk, probably mostly because I was wearing a cloud print sweater. And carrying a novel (We Need to Talk About Kevin, in case you were wondering. One of John Water's favorite novels. So really, how can I not?). It's somehow reassuring to know that even though I never have to take PE again, I can still be judged by my physical adept-ness. Or lack thereof.
Let's see... other things. My best friend and I made truffles out of cream cheese and oreos, which I'll beg you not to knock until you've tried. We also took some to our good friend/ carpool buddy/ guy pal who lives down the block. Obviously. A few things I was struck by- his room is so terribly sparse! He has, a bed, with porn star sheets, I noted (purple satin). He has a desk. And a dresser. And then a veritable plethora of electronics. Including a large subwoofer, which he was ridiculously proud of. And then we listened to his terrible dubstep for a while. And then we knocked over a fence. And shot nerf guns. Which are surprisingly loud. We had a terrifically nerdy and awkward time. The boy in question is both terrific, nerdy, and awkward, so the situation was appropriate. We reminisced about elementary school, during which the three of us would trespass on a neighbor's land and have picnics down by their stream on the boulders that litter our neighborhood.
And today I babysat a two-year-old for my volunteer hours for school. It's for a mental health nonprofit in the area. Anyway, it was surprisingly tolerable. He was actually a lovely little boy. We played with his cars (Mater, Lightning, and Diana) and read his book (about bunny rabbits). And then he was sad, because he didn't know where mommy was. I hope I handled that situation because I think I ended up telling him that mommy was asleep. Which was okay, because then he understand and then we explored the Seymour Senior Center. (No, seriously.) We saw a gaggle of old Chinese people playing pingpong, who generally fawned over this adorable child. And then we talked to the people getting help with their taxes, who mostly had down syndrome. And then we went into the gym and watched the old people playing badminton. And then we waved out the window, a guy who's dumptruck had broken down- Henry called him Dumptruck Dan. I was also impressed at his advanced linguistic and cognitive skills- he was very communicative and even told me that bees make honey in their hives.
But anyway, the point of this is that I kind of like children some of the time. When they are adorable. I just don't feel... that the decision to have a child should be that is taken lightly, nor assumed as a given, especially for women. Because suddenly you have this tiny person you have to help because it can't do anything, and hopefully you won't kill it. Once you get past not killing it, there is still no guarantee that it will turn out okay, because you have to be with it all the time and if you fuck it up, it's not just yourself who you've screwed over. Even if you do everything right, your kid could be stupid or an asshole or a sociopath.  So, I don't know. Or something. I guess the conclusion is don't think I hate children. Because I don't.

picture your body, hearing your voice, fall into your eyes

Today, our world history teacher felt compelled to shield us from some nudity in an anthropological documentary we were watching. I feel like adolescents, as a whole, are often grossly underestimated by adults in terms of maturity level. On some level, even the dumbest among us are able to comprehend that these people live in a different culture where different things are appropriate. Additionally, I find that I am fairly comfortable with nudity; probably due to the fact that I often tried to wear as few clothes as possible until I reached the age of six. Most photographs of me at those ages feature me partially clothed, usually wearing at least one hat and several beaded necklaces. Precociously eccentric.
Speaking of maturity, I've been reading a lot of essays about a growing trend of self-infantilism among women. It's interesting to me because I am in a sort of in between phase, no longer a girl but not yet a woman, I suppose. I do not feel terribly concerned, as some apparently do, with appearing adult-like. I find it often just comes naturally in the way that I feel, which is then reflected in the way that I dress/look. Of course, there is always an occasional need for a swipe of red lipstick, a stitch of lace, or a pair of stilettos. But for me, at least, I find I am usually pretty comfortable with myself.
Additionally, I'm reading 'The Virgin Suicides'- a few years ago it was made into a Sofia Coppola movie. It's kind of great- it's absolutely ethereal, in fact. I find that in our culture- and perhaps in my own mind- there is a particular romance in suicide. Not for me, I would never. But the idea is at once morbidly fascinating and beautiful. Beautiful in the imagery of it- blood blooming into the warm water. Floating, for a moment, in the air, before plunging to your death. It's poetic, really. This makes me sound suicidal, but I promise I'm not. I'm thinking purely from a writer's perspective.
I think that's about it for today. Um, goodnight?