Feeling: careful. and swamped.
Listening to: Cinderleaf - Anahuac Liberty
Reading/Watching: Queen of Spades, by Pushkin.

Goodness gracious. Have I actually gone five days without updating?

I'm quite proud of my fortitude. Kinda like when I weaned myself off of Neopets.

My social life has been going through the roof lately. Everyone has suddenly decided, "Hey, I should really call Katie, 'cause she's cool and we never hang out."

So I say "Yay!" and go. And go. And go. What was meant to be a quiet weekend where I caught up on chapters of Algebra homework became Friday night through Saturday afternoon with Bri and her airmen friends, Saturday evening with Jennifer, Sunday morning church, then much-needed catching up with Harry.

Okay, so maybe not much-needed. But much-desired. I am falling into that boy like a bottomless pillow. It scares me how hours, days, years could pass beneath us as we're just busy being we. It's very, very bad for my academic career.

I heard a story once about some Russian refugee women who went to a grocery store in America, and began frantically filling their baskets with oranges and bananas. It took several store clerks a long while to convince these poor women that there would always be oranges. That they didn't need to stock up as many as possible against the leaner times when they'd be dying for something besides flour and water.

I feel like those Russian women. Storing memories, crushing them to me even though there are far too many to handle all at once, as if it'll all run away once people figure things out and realize who I really am.

It's stupid, because cerebrally, I know I am cool. I know I have much to offer. The way he smiles at me and tugs my hair, asking softly, "Are you real?" makes me melt even as I hold him closer and start to fear.

To try to explain it, here's an excerpt from the Desmond journal that I don't mind sharing:

People think they want to look deeper. They coax their fingers under the surface and, like a zipper, open me down tooth by tooth, thinking some treasure or tragedy hides here, until they come across that last little element of odd and stop.

Realizing it's not buried riches or deep-rooted wisdom, it's a faulty smile and a sticky penny. I wonder why I let them try, when I know the outcome already. Is it that weird Jane-Bennet hope that someone will giggle and say "cool"? Instead of the awkward backstep and hasty smile.

Maybe there never will be another dry spell. Maybe I'm allowed to say, "I'm sorry, I can't, I have too much homework" and not treat every floating laugh and wry inside joke like a falling star.

Life has been good to me lately. Really good. Almost too good. This doesn't mean I'm about to lose it all.

Though there's no denying how my stomach lurched and knotted when I called home today and my mom said, "Oh, did you hear about your brother's injury?"

I was closing my eyes, thinking, here it comes, envisioning a crushed leg, a concussion, brain damage, all the worst scenes from all the football movies where someone is carted off the field amid tears, and it turns out Puppy got banged in the chin by an overzealous midget's helmet, and has four stiches.

Four. Stitches. The hulk is indestructible, and I should have known that. Especially since his team is 7-0 so far and he's feeling like a rock star.

I go home on Wednesday. It will be so good to nap and read and be an introverted sloth again.

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