Tears, insecurity, and dangerous mattresses.

I am going to pretend I have kept this blog well. I am going to pretend I have updated it regularly, filled it up with prose and memories, and that I have succeeded at blogging without really trying. I am going to pretend this blog loves me, that it does not resent me in the slightest for how much I've neglected it.

I am going to expect you to pretend right along with me.

So let me tell you about my day.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to drag yourself out of bed with a Good Book Hangover, still grieving characters and missing the novelty of the novel? Because I can now say I do. My mother had to physically drag me out of bed. By the leg.

So it goes without saying that I clung to The Fault in Our Stars all day, tearing through it for the second time and bursting out in laughter and then tears and tears and then laughter and then sobs in the middle of class. This is the cheesiest of cheeses, but it really was even more amazing the second time around.

I'm going to start my third read-through tomorrow.

In the middle of TFiOS, I also did that thing I occasionally do where I actually interact with other humans in The Real World. Pretty crazy stuff.

My AP Language and Composition teacher hasn't been in class lately and she likely will not be able to return for a while, so the AP Lit teacher is filling in where he can. Now, this man is brilliant. Everybody knows it. So, of course, I admire him quite a bit and was mortified at my boundless shortcomings when he began asking questions in class, and I felt that familiar sinking that a wonderful combination of low self-esteem and social anxiety tends to bring with it, and I was convinced I would somehow convey my insufficiency without even talking.

But he wrote a sentence on the board, asked about that sentence, and my bastard-ass hand decided to shoot up and facilitate my imminent death. The teacher called on me and I mumbled something about a shift from active voice to passive voice, a shift in focus and purpose, and he. Complimented. Me. Twice. For some crap answer. And as we left for lunch minutes later, he said "Good job, Claudia!" despite only having heard my name for the first time that day.

And I was so, so elated, but so, so confused.

I'm told this teacher is hard to please, that he's blunt and you should be prepared to have your soul crushed should you choose to take his class. And, again, I admire him. So my mind could not wrap itself around the idea that I had done something, however insignificant, to warrant a compliment, and I was grappling with that when my classmates (who I've grown to love sososo much) started talking about My Intelligence and My Writing and My Words.

Essentially, the things I'm convinced either (A) do not exist or (B) barely exist.

So I told them that, and they argued back, and I was stuck in That Place again.

I am genuinely, cripplingly insecure. My friends and my newspaper adviser yell at me about it all the time, but their efforts are wasted. I try, I really do, to conjure some confidence and walk into the school a new girl with slightly higher self esteem, but my efforts are wasted, too.

And when I vocalize my insecurities, I start panicking and thinking people will think I'm doing it for attention or to fish for compliments or in the pursuit of some sort of validation. Which isn't true at all. Compliments make my head hurt and put me in awkward positions and attention only heightens my social anxiety to an unbearable level. So.

But the fact remains-- I am insecure about my insecurities.

Jesus H. Christ, self. What is your deal?

Anywho.

I got home a few hours after all of this, and that's when I was almost killed by a mattress a few times.

My half-brother-who-is-older-than-my-mother-and-who-I-hold-an-infantile-grudge-against-out-of-so-many-feelings is redecorating his entire home, so he gave my dad lots of stuff. This is part of some new thing they have going on where my half brother actually acknowledges my father exists and interacts with him and what not after a couple decades, but I won't pretend to understand their dynamics. Especially when one half of it is a man who refused to talk to little kid me when all I wanted was an older brother. And I still want an older brother. And neither of the two that could qualify as that talk to me still. So. Whatever.

But I come home to this huge king-size mattress in my living room and I realize-- crap. We're going to have to get this upstairs, aren't we?

Here's the thing about architects-- they fail to consider the mattresses. At least, they fail to consider king-size ones. This leads to a family of five trying to push it up one flight of stairs with two hours using their meager strength and two ropes. And it is agony. Sheer agony.

And, of course, I have to weave back and forth between this side and that side, this corner and that one, and they let go at all the wrong times and I find myself between a mattress and a hard place. The mattress isn't even that soft. It's actually hundreds and hundreds of pounds, and my lungs and bones and other body parts do not take kindly to it.

So I'm screaming "help, help, help, help, HELP, I AM DROWNING IN MATTRESS" for the fifth time, and I wonder if this is what Hazel felt like the night of The Miracle in The Fault in Our Stars. I wonder if this is what it feels like to have lungs that suck at being lungs.

Mostly, I just want to get out from under there.

And that's how I learned that I would not wish mattresses on my worst enemy.

And that's why I'm aching all over now.

And that pain somehow reminded me of this blog, so here I am.

And.

A blog post about nothing and everything.

For the longest time, I've been telling myself to "sit the hell down and blog." I think that the reason I haven't really done so stems mostly from the fact that I have far too much free time on my hands. But tonight, I have bags to pack, movies to watch, homework to do, blogs on which to lurk, a room to clean, books to write, hair to pull out of my skull in frustration, and an ALL CAPS dance party with myself to attend. And then some. So, of course, I have found it most fitting to take this wonderfully chaotic moment, sit myself in the middle of the self-inflicted pandemonium, and blog.

Makes sense to me.

On the off chance that there is anybody reading this, myself aside, I'm going to have to assume that you, dear reader, are at least vaguely acquainted with who I am, because I'm just too damn lazy and uninspired to make a real introductory post. I'm sure I'll kick myself years in the future when I sit down to read my time capsule of a blog and notice that I didn't give myself a solid starting place, but Future Me is going to have to deal with it.

While I'm still running on the poorly-conceived assumption that I have, le gasp, readers, I'm also going to assume that you, dear reader, are aware of my tumblr account. In light of this awareness, you might be asking yourself (as I have many times) why I'm starting on a site that few people seem to use anymore, especially since I already have a blog.

But I don't have a blog, dear reader. I have a tumblr.

That tumblr has been my corner of the interwebs for over two years now, and I adore it with every cell in my too-tall body. I've become ridiculously comfortable with it and with my followers and I really, really do not see myself parting with the site anytime in the near future.

But it's still not a blog.

I've never really wanted to blog blog, as I've never found myself dissatisfied with the stream-of-consciousness, incoherency-is-perfectly-acceptable style of tumblr. I have, however, found myself reading other people's blogs. People like Hayley G. Hoover, who I greatly admire, or Kristina Horner, who I also admire, or my favorite authors, or writing gurus, or anybody I happen to stumble across. And I've loved those blogs!

So the thought was already planted in my head.

Lately, though, I've been writing less and less and feeling thoroughly flustered more and more. The lack of writing I attribute to a lack of inspiration, but it's taken a toll on both my (already low) writing skills and my peace of mind. A blog, I thought, would encourage me to write more while I conquer the big bad Writers' Block monster (who I really doubt exists, but will use as an excuse when I'm too ashamed of my own inadequacy) and would help me clear my mind by taking my jumbled thoughts and throwing it on this website for a small, small fraction of the world to see and laugh at.

We'll see where it goes.

If you've read (or skimmed) this far, I thank you from my heart of hearts and offer you more trivial rambling, this time concerning today and tomorrow and a week for now. Huzzah.

Today is Easter, and while I do believe in God, I'm still figuring my beliefs out. I didn't think my lack of enthusiasm or care for the religious aspect of the holiday would be a problem; I suppose it wasn't. Still, my parents-- who have always sworn to allow my siblings and I choice in our respective beliefs-- forced us to sit down for thirty minutes of Joel Osteen's empowered rambling. Perhaps I'm just an easily-irritated person (I am), but the man annoys me. Anybody remotely preachy does, really. So I was fuming, a tiny bit. Just enough to make a scene like the Rebellious Teenager I am (haha, no) and standing up with distinct indignation when the sermon was over, trying to make a subtly grand exit, but tripping on my pajamas and falling flat on my face.

Graceful as they come, aren't I?

My siblings did their little egghunt thing, and we sat outside and took in the day for a bit. This was actually my first year not participating in Ye Olde Egghunt, actually, just because I didn't feel like it. It's not that I'm "growing up," because I really am a kid at heart and mind. It's just lost all its appeal to me. So I sat.

And then I went upstairs to watch penguin movies, because that's what badass teenagers like myself do.

Tomorrow is Monday, and Mondays suck, and that's all I have to say about that.

Thursday, however, will be the first of a wonderful, wonderful series of days. It's the day we (my newspaper staff, four teachers, myself) depart at an ungodly hour towards Orlando for my very first FSPA competition. FSPA is the Florida Scholastic Press Association, and there is an annual statewide conference and competition that innumerable schools attend. I'm part of my school's newspaper and television staffs (newspaper is my life, television is my forced hobby), so I'm really looking forward to that.

It's only eight of us students that are going, and I love most of the seven. They're some of my closest friends and are all amazing, so spending three days with them will be fantastic.

Did I mention it's on Disney frakkin' property? Theme parks are a huge part of my life, and my obsession with them is somewhat closeted but all-consuming. I haven't been to Orlando for more than a day in several years, though, due to financial issues, so this is something I'm really looking forward to.

More than anything, I'm looking forward to Saturday. Oh, Saturday. After an inevitably boring awards ceremony, we'll be heading to Islands of Adventure, which is arguably my favorite place in the entire world. It will be my first visit to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Now, WWoHP and I have history. I've been obsessively following the project since before it was announced, when it was this mixture of believable rumors and unbridled hope. The project was the combination of two of my biggest passions-- Potter and theme parks (the former being immeasurably bigger and more significant than the latter, but the latter still being an immense part of my existence), so I was hooked. From the day of its announcement, I made it my job to know everything. There is not a square inch of the area whose history and current state I don't know about. People don't believe me when I say this, but I know everything down to the drinks that construction workers drank while working on Hogwarts (Powerade, blue and orange, and water).

Once again, financial issues made my going there when it opened an impossibility. And now I'm finally going. I can't even begin to put into words how excited and grateful I am.

Because, as you'll discover in your stay on my blog, I'm a patently uninteresting person, I've run out of currently-relevant things to discuss. This post is getting ridiculously long anyways, so I'll force myself to end it here.

Happy Feet calls.

DFTBA,
Ravenclawdia