Girls and their Hair

From Baby Summer

Girls and their Hair

“I hate my hair!” That's Ana, every morning when she looks in the mirror. She has the same hair as me. Long, dark, straight. The only difference is I love my hair.

“Why don't you hate your hair Dee Dee?” She barks at me.

“I love it because I can braid it, and put it in pony tails, or just one, or just leave it. I can do anything I want with my hair!”

“Ugh,” Ana sighs and shakes her head. “Everything I do with my hair it looks just the same- ugly.”

“Who are you calling ugly?”

Me and Ana have the same hair but we see it in different ways. Ana only sees the bad- like when she wakes up every morning and it is tangley and hurts to brush out. Or how it looks flat when she has been berating it for a few minutes. Hair does that. It's right next to your ears- it can hear you. 

Stories

   My stories are like my children. Right now I have 11 children in the home and I need some of them, one of them at least to grow up and move out. I have two grown children- Once a Girl and the Perfect Generation but Perfect Generation had a baby- my grand baby- the sequel and I got to raise it. So finishing that one didn't help me any. Freakier Friday is an 18 year old but still in high school and still needs a new name.
   I just found an old notebook full of a few of my abandoned children and they were a lot cuter than I remembered, a lot cuter than the other ones I have. I couldn't help but take them back once I saw how cute they were. I want to spend time with all of them, but if I spend time with all of them it's going to take 11 times as long for one of them to grow up.
     When I get a new idea for a book it's like getting pregnant again. Oh no! Not another one! You can't finish the stories you already have! I do not need this other mouth to feed. Let's think about this and try to come up with a good reason this would NOT be a good idea for a book. But it's already here, it's too late I love it already. 

My Family's Name

We are going hiking at Mount Lahana tomorrow morning to find a name for the baby, "six o'clock, no make it five!" That is the drill sergeant my sister. And if you think it is nuts for a nine month pregnant person to climb a mountain before the sun is even up then do us a favor- keep it to yourself, cuz I'm the one who has to live with her.

"Why so earlyyy?" That's Kyle, I think. He's under a blanket and doesn’t really sound like Kyle but who else would it be.

"It's not early, it's 6:17," My sister hisses which wakes me up good and fast but not Kyle. Ana is pissed because we have slept so late. She does not notice that the sun has slept late too, that that is normal.

"How did you get over here?" I ask.

"I didn't, I slept on your porch. I slept walked, I don’t know!" Kyle retreats back under his blanket.

"Get up!" If I was naming my sister I would call her wacka, I suggest that.

"Maybe I will wacka you!"

"C'mon, let's get up," I tell Kyle.

The drive is not long enough when you want to sleep but I don't get to sleep anyway, Ana says she cannot drive because she is pregnant. I know better than to argue with her now. I drive even though I am fourteen and have never driven the truck beyond the driveway before. Driving is not that hard. There are names everywhere, like- pothole, speed bump, deathtrap, cliff's edge, yi-yikes! that last one Kyle came up with, the all go on the notebook but Ana doesn’t think any of them are very good.

"How about Sun Rising?" At last it is doing so. It is red down here, not the way you think the sun normally looks, the way it looks in paintings sometimes and you think- the sun never looks like that! It does at 6:45 in the morning- who knew, who knew?

"Red Eye." Ana looks at it.

"That sounds horrible," I say.

"Isn't that like a disease or something," Kyle says.

"No, like the eye of God."

"I don’t think God would have red eye."

"Yeah, I think they're blue."

"No, they're made out of gold, or marbles."

"You guys are both wrong, the sun is God's eye."

"Where's his other eye?"

"He only needs one."

"The moon," Kyle says at the same time.

"The moon is his eye at night."

"Moon eyes." I say.

"Nothing sounds right," and Ana does not talk for the rest of the trip, even when I ran over the tree stump that Kyle said was a raccoon.

"I'm not a raccoon killer!"

"Raccoon Killer." Raccoon Killer goes into the notebook, I wrote Treestump Killer and Stumpy for Kyle. "You're going to drive home!" I yell at Kyle.

I cannot stand the thought that I have killed someone. I want to close my eyes and see a tree stump with my tire marks on it, that's what we will see when we go back, no blood on the tire, or scrap of fur, no raccoon carcass on the side of the road. I want to close my eyes and miss the turn to the mountain, to head into town instead- to get a drink, to forget my sorrow, to swerve,

"Don't close your eyes!" Kyle screams. "Jesus!"

"Jesus," I inform him, "is a name Latin people name their children, not us."

Okay I made it to the park, "no raccoon family swarming us and demanding justice yet," Kyle says.

"That's because I hit a stump!"

"Stumps don't cry, this one cried."

"Crying Stump, Crying tree, Weeping Willow, Willow."

I want to hit Kyle and my sister. "It was a stump! Sometimes they cry! It was cut down! Wouldn't you cry if you were a stump?"

Kyle so makes me want to cry.

We are at the mountain, my sister is looking up at the top and probably just now realizing that she can't see it. "You guys, let's go, it's already 7:39," she snaps.

 

Dreams Are Like Drugs

Dreams are like drugs and sometimes you get a bad trip.
Last night I dreamed I was making cookies. Not a bad start. But I was also watching a baby. In my dream I decided to have the baby nap in the oven because it was only 300 degrees- just nice and warm. A little bit later I realized this was a bad plan and rushed over to pull the baby out but it was too late- the baby had turned into a baby shaped cookie, just like all the others on the cookie sheet.
I didn't think this was strange, not dream worthy at all, but I did kind of suspect that this was a dream because I had an inkling- I think, think, I would be smart enough in real life not to baby down for a nap in the oven. Think so. So I decided even though I didn't see a baby anywhere, even though I was horrified by the baby cookie, that I would just pretend to put the baby down in a crib and see if my dream would go from there.
But then the parents showed up. They were going into the room with the crib. I hid in fear, would they find their baby sleeping there or would they see the baby cookie? What if the police came? They would know immediately what happened. I should just confess now! Oh my gosh I don't want to go to jail! I'll never see my family again! I DON'T WANT TO GO TO JAIL!! How had this happened?
I upset myself so much I woke up and in my half drowsy state I realized that it indeed had been a dream because I was definitely, definitely smart enough to not put a baby in the oven. It wasn't until a few hours later that I realized what else was wrong with this situation- ie that babies do not turn into cookies. Why does my brain do this me? Why? I don't take drugs! Should I start?

Colors

Inspired by the color poems in the book Wayside School is Falling Down by Louis Sachar. Which by the way are way funnier than mine, check it out.

Pink
fresh cut carnations in a hello kitty sink
pink

White
It's snowing on the rooftop, gleaming lights bright white

Orange
An orange tabby cat licks his paws in the setting sun
melted creamsicle runs

Brown
A bunny's fur, the same color as its nest in the ground
brown

Red
stop the rage, lava spilling out of your head, cinnamon flames,
red

The Lying Game book review

The Lying Game is a series I keep listening to more out of boredom than anything else. People say that life is too short to read bad books when there are so many good ones out there but I've had trouble finding any- good ones I mean. This series is okay. Which is more than I can say for most other YA books I've tried reading or listening to lately so this one stays. Which isn't to say it doesn't make me too nauseous to listen to while running though because it does, like totally bi-otch.

I've listened to the first four books and apparently there are two more. There is probably enough interesting stuff here for one book. I know other readers felt this way about Sara Shepard's other series- Pretty Little Liars, too but to me she throws in enough interesting side stories to make that series entertaining. Here, not so much, unless you find school dances, dates, and endless conversations with her friends about which one is the bi-otch-iest entertaining.

The series is about a foster teen named Emma who discovers she has a long lost twin- Sutton. She arranges to meet her, only to find out when she arrives in her sister's town that Sutton has been murdered and the killer has orchestrated for Emma to take over her life.

It is a jarring narrative experience. It is told in the third person through the eyes of Emma who inexplicably hands off to the ghost of Sutton who talks in the first person and doesn't remember anything about her life but can somehow read Emma's mind. There is no warning when this transition is about to happen and it can take a few paragraphs to sort out who is talking. Sutton is a total bore as a ghost, mostly just whining about how Emma judges her, and mooning over dreamy guys, and then conveniently remembering pieces of her life (but omitting the most important parts) when it is convenient to the plot.

Sutton's friends are very one dimensional- they are bi-otches, as they like to say every other page or so. Even though they get a little back story as the series goes on they are really hard to relate to or like any of them. Emma has a little more depth but the depiction of all foster parents through her eyes as negligent a-holes who just use their foster kids to get government checks was off putting to say the least. I'm sure some of them are insufferable but it is a really tough job being a foster parent and there are much easier ways to get money if that's all you're after. Why is it that Emma didn't even have one foster parent that was a decent human being?

Each book centers around one “suspect” that Emma is 100% positive killed Sutton until about ¾ of the way through when -oh my gosh! they didn't kill Sutton! What a surprise!

The books would be more interesting if they focused more on the murder mystery and less on what everyone is wearing.

I kept listening because I needed something to entertain me at work and it passes, barely. Something interesting finally happened at the end of the fourth book. As in, actually interesting and unexpected. This is the kind of twist that Pretty Little Liars is full of. Is it too late to save the series though? I guess I will check out the next two books, or the last one at least. Let's just hope they don't extend the series again!

29th Life

My 29th Life

    I am alive, already. It feels like I just blinked my eyes and 999,999,999,982 years went by .I can’t pin prick the exact moment, it’s more like a growing awareness that beats with my renewed heart and spreads like blood all through my tiny body. Beat. Beat. With every beat I become more alive, I wonder when the opposite happens and every beat starts making me a little closer to dead. When I am nine or does it not until the water starts filling my lungs?
    Great, I am nine seconds old and I am already remembering. It gets earlier every time. I just want to rest, can’t I sleep in this time?
    Of course how’s this for my sense of time- 999,999,999,982 years feels like an instant to me but nine months in my mother’s womb is the closest thing I know to eternity. The closest thing I know to rest.
    I am not an ordinary baby. The only thing I don’t remember is when I was.
    I remember when I will be born- May 15th, a Wednesday at 5:16 am. My mom will name me Sam after my grandfather who will never call me that or his grandson as many time as I live. If I am alive my father has already left my mother and me- leaving behind nothing but my brown skin, brown hair and brown eyes. I will have my mother’s last name and be Sam Fredricks and never know what my father’s is- though I guess Ramirez or Cruz or Juarez.
    I remember who’s president- Bill Clinton, a man that my grandfather will throw his beer mug at on tv one summer night when I am three.
    I remember who the prettiest girl in the world is- Dominique, and that she does not remember me. I don’t know what it is like to kiss a girl but I remember that they have cooties again so I don’t mind, for now.
    I remember high school. How could I forget? I remember the beginning but not the end- I will never make it out. On the first day one of the bigger boys will give me bruises that my step father will try to match. I remember my mom pretending not to notice. I know exactly how many times this will happen- eighty seven. Eighty seven times every time.
    I remember when I die. I will hurt, I will be scared. I will see it coming because every time it is exactly the same yet I won’t do anything about it. The world will turn black and then I will end up back here.
    I remember because it just happened to me, what felt like moments, but was billions of years before I had a heart beat again and woke up inside my mother. For the twenty ninth time.