Julia

Summer vacation (all one and a half days of it, so far) is shaping up to be its usual string of staying home and watching movies with my sister, or being taken to the mall when my parents are home. Does that sound like I'm complaining? Because I'm definitely not; I love the feeling of freedom. I guess I'm officially a senior now; I'm basing that off of the fact that the former seniors graduated yesterday, so if they're no longer seniors, that must move the class of '06 up. Speaking of which, our class needs to get a slogan, preferably one better than "'05 keeping it live." What rhymes with "six"? Sticks? Picks? Licks? Twix? Do Twix bars have anything to do with the class of '06? If they can make a connection, the Steering Committee or someone could pass out Twix bars at Baccalaureate or something. I like it...

Anyway, my sister and I went last night to see The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It's based on this book about four girls who share a pair of jeans that magically fit them all, and mail them around to each other during the summer while they're all separated. It was a decent film, but distorted the events of the book considerably. There were about a million girls at the movie that were between twelve and fourteen, plus Anne and Jenna from school (who were delighted to see me there, confessing that they'd thought they were losers, going to see a pretty tweenish movie). I felt a little weird there, too, but I guess I don't care. I know I'm supposed to be reading all kinds of deep, classic books (Herman Hesse and Thomas Pynchon and so on), but it's always nice just to kick back with a book I liked from middle or elementary school, like Walk Two Moons, which I recently reread. The reading level might be a little below me, but that doesn't mean it's not a good story. I still cried, like I cry every time I read that book.

Today, my first full day of vacation (well, technically, I suppose, that would be Tuesday, since Monday is sort of a school day; we have to go get our book deposit refunded to us, but I'm counting today as the first day), my mom took Maureen and I to the mall to buy some summer clothes. The word is that in Italy, you can't wear shorts or sleeveless tops when you go into churches, so we had to buy some skirts. I generally like the mall--not in a teenage-girlish, "oh my god, the mall!" kind of way, but just so I can watch the people and walk around and everything. While my sister and I were sitting down, waiting for our mom to buy some nursing scrubs at Life Uniform, we saw this Indian guy, probably about twenty, who just walked right into a sign. It was about person-height. My sister just burst out laughing, and then I started laughing, too; we couldn't help it. He gave us a weird look and walked away quickly, and then I felt bad for laughing at him. That's probably something I would do, maybe have done before. I'd be embarrassed if some girls were laughing at me.

I know being embarrassed by one's parents is kind of a teenager cliche, but I can't help it with my mom. She talks loudly, sings randomly, tries to persuade me to try on clothes that I think are rather hideous... When we were in Bergner's today, I was checking out a brown skirt, and my sister said it was ugly. My mom agreed that she doesn't like the color brown. Whenever we saw a brown item of clothing, then, my mom would go, "Oh, I think brown is so blah." Finally, I said, "I don't know, I kind of like brown." After that, upon spotting a brown piece of clothing, she would say, "Oh, Coll, here. This is brown." My sister picked up on it and started running across to anything brown, stroking it and excitedly showing it to me. It got to be a joke then, and I had to laugh.

I guess I had better take advantage of these few lazy days before everything gets busy. Today my mom called the University of Minnesota and scheduled me for a visit in the middle of next week, and right after that there's Nationals, and then Italy, and then quiz bowl camp, and then my class at Rock Valley. Before I know it, school will be starting again... No. It's only the first day. I don't want to think about that yet.