alo!

what the hell is caller i.d.?

okay. i really really have so much to say but what to say...? my days are spent lying out in the park with inta juice smoothies and seeing movies (aka: work) and good sleep. it's not quite working in an african orphanage, but it's enough for me. even though i am so keen on routine, i don't want to live the same day twice. it's all about the cheap thrills.

today after i woke up to an empty house, i lounged around my room for a while, getting dressed at a snail's pace while reading and enjoying the radio. so nice. besides walking around in underwear and cranking up the volume to the max, i started to wonder what else i would do differently if other people were around. sometimes i'm not sure my family counts as "other people" since they have pretty much seen it all, but in general, other people. what guards do people put up once they step out in public? what little quirks or mannerisms do they hide? a good 10 minutes of my morning was spent making faces of all sorts into the mirror, some (actually a lot of them) i'm sure are terrifying. after i realized what i was actually doing... trying to seduce a mirror, i got embarassed in front of myself and stopped immediately. weirdness, best expressed in my real journals, which i love. they are so irrational and dramatic and me. they demonstrate my ability to completely change moods at least 3 times on one page, although i'd like to believe i have a steady, cheerful disposition for the majority for the time because as my mother likes to often remind me: "leah, you have things pretty good at the moment."

right now, the thing i dislike the most is when my days consist of saying hundreds of "have a nice day"s with a stiff pleasant face or robotically running on a tredmill plugged into man-made music, when i can feel myself wanting to be numb. yuck. there's also the sparodic moments of really caring about the sudanese genocide when reading the newspaper and then being disgusted with myself, and i don't have the energy to write something great on the impossibility of people not being racist and the media's ideal woman being balanced between thinking too much and too little, and also about how i go to noodles way too much. but I LOVE IT.

vladimir nabokov is bizzare for sure but his descriptions and phrases make him one of my favorite writers: "incarnadine zebras!" and "oh, she was very genteel: she said 'excuse me' whenever a slight burp interrupted her flowing speech, called an envelope an ahnvelope, and when talking to her lady-friends referred to me as mr. humbert."

ooh before i forget. I WANT TO GO TO: PAT MCCURDY, SPAM JAM, SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS, PARIS, ETC.

tomorrow i start the first day of interning for my potential life-long career. i hope it works. when i realize that i am actually nervous for this, i feel the excited-happy-nervous. it's been a while since i was truly nervous for something.

"yeah. well so. that was when i was like 3." -kyra the 5-year-old