Are · the · stars · that · small, · after · all?

But goddammit, Bush!

To know my brother is to love him. He is a beautiful, bright, funny, creative person. It's a shame he felt he had to give himself to the army (so he could go to college) because they do not know how special he is.

the happy of my birthday

okay now that i'm not so mopey.
what i got: my vancouver parents got me "Rock Star", "Donnie Darko:The Director's Cut", "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", (all on DVD) and "The Virgin Suicides" (on VHS). And a CD of The Brian Setzer Orchestra (swing, baby!). They also gave me a funny card and a sentimental card. It was great, except for Nevada not being there.
He paid Sarah to buy me the journal I wanted so he had a slight presence. Sarah got me a calendar, "The Bad Girl's Calender of 2006" It's a planner. Where my school planner ends, this will begin. Very practical.
The next day, my real birthday, the party with my mom, I got an MP3 player, but it doesn't work. It'd be so cool if it worked. It's supposed to turn on automatically when you hook it up but it doesn't. It has free customer service so I called it but they told me they can't help me (more or less), and I should go to the website and post on the forum and wait for a response. I have and I am. I am just out in the fucking cold. It would've been so cool but now we'll probably have to send it back and hope they judge it as defective so we can get one that works. But I'm getting a bad feeling that these things are defective a lot of the time. Fuuuuck. not really though. it's not bothering me that much. It's not really like Fuck. It's just like Dang.
My grandparents gave me a $50 Meier and Frank gift card. We went to Meier and Frank downtown and found me a good pair of jeans on sale for $25. I could've gotten the 7 because I looked cute in them but I got the 9 because they don't slouch in the back to show my crack when I sit down. It's a minority of girls that would've handled that decision in the same way. I got two of the same pair and I thought I'd use my whole card that way, but because Meier and Frank rules... there was an extra 20% off for the "birthday sale" ("hey, it's my birthday too!"), so I still had $10 on my card. And the cashier told me that if I spend more than $50, I get a $10 bonus. So I bought a $16 black zip-up fleece hoody (with $6 of help from grandma). so i still have $10. Meier and Frank rules. I wanna get another bra. I only bought one for back to school and I should have one to wear while one's in the wash. We went to Pioneer Place for food and I ended up in Claire's wit Hannah. I helped her decide on a fake nose ring for herself, a rainbow ring for Sarah and sparkly black cat earrings for me (they rule!!) My grandparents gave Hannah $20 and each of us got a package of altoids (?).
I got an REI gift card from my other grandparents (why? not even they know) so I'll get a sports bra (two years in cross country, never did get one of those... why... the uniforms had them built in! or spikes for track. i think spiked running shoes are only worth something in track. and what else would i buy from REI? my dad says "it's the disneyland of sporting goods stores." and i say that's like trying to get me excited about the disneyland of hardware stores)
I still have a letter from my Aunt Christy and Uncle Tim and one from my Aunt Susan and Uncle Phil. They came in teh mail and I haven't opened them yet. I'll open them when I get back to vancouver to round out the weekend with the last thing i have to open. I think there's money from Christy and Tim (I know there's confetti, my aunt's weird. my stepmom says "Open it outside!" I save the confetti... why? i'll find out when i get there)

I KNOW I saw that ghost. It's not like most accounts when the person goes to bed and is half-asleep when they see it. I was wide awake. I was standing in our TV room, breaking down a small box in my hands for the recycling. I was looking out the doorway to the stairway. You know how your mind wanders, and it looks like you're looking at something but your mind is miles away... I was looking at the stairs absent-mindedly and I saw a girl walk down the stairs and turn the corner very quickly and go into my dad's office. It's like I was daydreaming, but when I saw her, I was snapped to attention and froze and clearly watched her step down the last couple stairs and onto the floor (when I heard the floorboard creak) and she went quickly into my dad's office. I didn't even bother looking for her. There was no way she was still going to be there. I went to tell my family.
I wasn't scared by it. I was stunned, though.
She seemed grey to me, like she was in black and white though everything around her was in color. But I didn't really see black or white, she was shades of grey. But she was as real as you or me. She wasn't a photo, she was 3-D, a hollogram at most, without a projector. She was wearing a nice cute little dress that was probably white (light grey to me. something a little girl would wear to church. It's like something I would've worn to Communion when I was about 8 (when I was still Catholic). She was probably about that old. She had long hair, probably brown (who knows how I can tell that from grey? i probably want her to look like me). I wish I was a talented artist so i could paint her. She was young, flat-chested. Her dress was made like that, tight shapeless chest. It had a puffy skirt(just above the knee, I think) with puffy short sleeves traced with lace. And she wasn't wearing any shoes. I remember her little bare feet vividly. I don't remember many things vividly. It's my selective memory. Anything that's not interesting gets edited out.
I think she's wearing what she was buried in. They used to bury you without your shoes. And if that's true, her Sunday-best dress makes sense.

That is the only ghost I have seen. Full-body. Wide awake. Right in front of me. No one can vouge for me because I'm the only one who saw it, but no one could ever talk me out of what I know I saw.

The ghosts in our house don't bother us. The only bother that comes from them is invented in our own minds. They don't want to bother us. They try very hard to stay out of our way. It's obvious since they don't mess with us and every time we see them, it seems they're they're trying to avoid us and they're embarrassed we've seen them.

Either that or they're as scared of us as we are of them. Strike that. Either that or they're MORE scared of us than we are of them. We don't run from them.
We just stare, dumbfounded.