Mona

I've been completely bugged about how awful my last blog post was, and it's bothering me so much that I'm writing another one.

MONA.

Mona is the little woman that sits on my wrist all day long.  When she's not there I still push back my sleeve to check on her.  It's instinctive.

She's a heartbeat that follows me everywhere I go, counting away my seconds and minutes tirelessly.  When I slow down and lift her up to my ear, I can hear the time ticking as it retreats.  

Mona's been dunked in a tank full of sting rays, drenched in a sudden downpour on the W&L campus, constantly knocked against table edges and chair backs.  She's got some scratches and a thread is loose on her leather band.  She's not perfect.  I've had to reset her a few times because she's gotten off-time, but for some reason that makes me love her more.  We're both ladies just trying to do the best that we can at our task.

My little woman is a classy one, instantly recognizable.  People are always telling her how pretty she is.  She keeps smiling her enigmatic smile, giving away nothing.  

Let me tell you about her smile.  Boy, it's a wonderful smile.  I wrote a little poem, just a stanza, thinking about the gentle curve of her minuscule lips.  Bear with it.

I know a girl with a Mona Lisa mouth
boy she looks so scared most of the time
bracing against braces
as they cut her up
but when she smiles, she seems so satisfied.

She knows that she's not perfect, and she's accepted it.  She's satisfied with her scratched face and her fading buckle.  She's still beautiful.

That's why I always have a space on my wrist for Mona.  She's a pretty little thing, sure, but she's more than that.  She's a mystery, she's a legend, she's shared in my adventures and my mundane tasks.  I feel like a girl with braces that are rubbing against the inside of my mouth, but when I can get past the pain and manage a smile...  I just hope it's Mona's smile.  

In fact, I want more than Mona's smile.  I want a Mona Lisa heart.  I want a big heart that keeps ticking and trying.  I want a Mona Lisa attitude that keeps me smiling no matter what.

Right now, I'm about to zonk out, so I'll just go to bed before my words start running together.  Hopefully this post is a wee bit better than that shoddy last one I scraped together.

Night-o, all. 

Me in 5 Seconds

Oh, hey.  The last two posts have been pretty lengthy, if I do say so myself, so this one will be extra quick.

Added a progress bar in the far right sidebar that I will update every day.  The reason I haven't written much here is because I've been blazing through the first draft of a novel I've been meaning to write for over two years.  Exciting?  Yes it is.

I write about a chapter a day, which is absolutely ridiculous when I stop and think about it.  It's true that all of my friends are gone now, so I have all of this time to myself until I go home.  But still, I tried out NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel Writing Month to you non-writers) in November and couldn't get past the first chapter.  Now here I am already a third of the way through.  I just tweaked some things around and BAM, it clicked.

I started writing on the first, by the way.  It's now the ninth and I'm going to write Chapter 8 today.  Only a day behind schedule!

...Yes, I know that the non-writers that are reading this really don't care.  Well, suck it up.  This is all that I've been doing for over a week now, and if you want to know about my life then here you go.  My life.

Sidebar.  Purple progress meter.  Check it.
This summer is going to be 100% about my novel, which I might post bits of in August if there is a demand.  I doubt it.

Well I have nothing else to say, so scram!  Get back to your summer!  I've got some writing to do.  :)

HOW DAIN IS FEELING:

That is all.  Class dismissed.

Facebook Fast and My Life As A Bookworm

Now that I've returned from my Facebook hiatus, and I'm currently procrastinating a history paper (die, America and the Enlightenment, die!) I think it's high time that I update you.

Side note: I think I'm going to name my first little dog лапушка.  Lapushka.  Little Paw.  Isn't Russian just adorable sometimes?

This week was so wonderful, at least in the beginning.  I went outside all of the time so I couldn't hear Facebook's siren call, and I adventured.  I read books, which I'll tell you about later, I wrote things, I watched Anna Karenina.  I returned all of my library books and checked out six new ones.  I wrote letters, picked flowers, got hit on by ten year olds, which is a true story.  I can still hear their pre-pubescent voices from down the street.  "Hey, what's your name?  He likes you!  He wants to kiss you!" the kid on the bike is shouting, ratting out his friend on the bike next to him.  They had Southern accents and it was really funny.

It was hard, not going on Facebook.  I'm not going to pretend like it wasn't.  It seems ridiculous, having an addiction to a social networking site, especially since I'm not one of those avid Farmvillers and I don't have eleventy-billion friends to stalk.  Clicking on the Facebook link in my favorites bar has become compulsive, though, and it kind of scares me how often I go to the internet when I so much as pause in my homework.

cont'd...

A Herd of Word Nerds

Alright, alright, you've caught me.  I'm writing another blog.  I know that I'm not so good at these things.  Don't expect another one for a while, either.  Maybe I'll write one or two over break.  We'll just have to find out.

I'm not going to do another one of those "let me talk about (insert broad topic here) for the next 5 years", have no fear.  I felt kind of guilty about the last one, so I added pictures to make it more interesting.

You know what's silly?  Or maybe not so silly.  The first thing that I did when I visited home over Halloween weekend was play the piano.  The first thing that I did when I stepped in my house over Thanksgiving Break was play the piano.  And I bet that the first thing I do when I go home after finals is...  You've guessed it.  Play the piano.

I never realized how much I love to play until I didn't have the luxury of playing whenever I wanted.  We were without a piano for quite a few years, and it absolutely killed me.  I found myself staring enviously at other peoples' pianos, wishing that I knew a cool enough song to play in front of other people.

I've always been a music lover.  Actually, more like a music collector.  I love experiencing new sounds and musicians and putting it all on my computer so that I can listen to it whenever I want.  I love being able to listen to hours of music that I don't recognize on my own iTunes.  Thank you, One Track Mind, largehearted boy, Said the Gramophone, and especially, Blalock's monthly Indie/Rock Playlist , for meeting all of my indie music needs.  There's your shout-out.

But, I didn't know that I actually liked to play, as I said, until I couldn't.  A few months before I left for college, we got a new piano, and I loved it.  I started listening to all sorts of pianists again, searching for sheet music that I thought I might be able to play.  Some songs, I found, I learned, and I loved.  One song I discovered that my hands were physically unable to play.  (That was such a bummer.)  Other songs, I can only worship from afar, so to speak.  Maybe, some day, I'll be able to play them.

Now what is the point of that story?  I don't know.  I just wanted to tell you.  I bet that many of you didn't even know that I play an instrument, let alone am in love with it.  Just like many of you didn't know that I write, let alone am in love with it.  Now that I think about it, there's probably a lot that you don't know about me.

I am writing constantly, without pen and paper.  I am in an eternal state of composing.  When I get bored, I write stories in my head.  I make up situations and dialogues and try to describe things that I see.  I know I'm a word nerd; I'm perfectly okay with it.  I treat it as an art, not just a means of self-expression.  Sometimes the creation is just as exciting as the finished product.

If you're ever wondering why I have such a strange expression on my face, now you might know the reason.  Because, in my little world, something awesome is happening, or something awful, something dramatic that could only happen in a book or movie.  Or maybe I'm just saying the things that I really want to, the things that you'll never get to hear.  The things that even I don't know what I'm thinking sometimes.  And that happens a lot.

This is the world of Dain.  Hop aboard, enjoy your stay!