I shouldn't be up, but I can't sleep. Last night I had a dream about the black widow we caught, and it got out of the jar. It was a lot bigger and when I woke up I fully knew how to describe them accurately � the word is arthritic. Their legs are like, arthritic looking and yuck�

I had an entry and the mouse on my laptop began acting like a bee buzzing and got stuck in the right corner of my laptop, so I had to shut it down and most likely lost my other entry, so I'll re-write it much more brilliantly here I hope. Don't expect it though. The mouse pointer has malfunctioned before. I should probably disable it and stick to my portable mouse.

In short this is what I said:

I finished my essay, and am rather proud of it for being a one-hour essay. It took under two hours to write, take a long break, edit, and finish it. And as I said before, it's two pages. I am not capable of writing a one-page essay. When I began writing it, I realized I was going in an overly ambitious direction and changed the focus to 'this is what I hope I can do' instead of assuming I will get to do those things. But I made sure to emphasize on-campus and helping mainly current students. Please. Begging stars, God, Sophocles, and the guy scheduled to spray our garage on Monday for black widows, please don't make do recruiting. I am not good with 17 year olds, and I don't want to be responsible for one of them thinking I'm 19, and thinking if they enroll that they may have a chance�no, no, no�

Last night, my friend Helen signed on. I kind of expected it to be Josh stealing internet time away from his annoying relatives, but no, it was Helen. My laptop froze when the message first popped up, and then there she was. I was suddenly as excited as you can be while half-asleep at 2 a.m. She has been busy and not around for ages, and I've missed her and faithfully written and cared and not gotten mad when she didn't or couldn't reply, and ecstatic when she did. She is one of the first d-land friends I had back in my Vale of Enna days�back when I had 24/7 to write anything I wanted and zero time limits or responsibility or homework. (Part of me misses that.) I knew her a year before I found out she lived in Colombia. Her English is better than most everyone I've met here. 0:-)

In response to me hoping to see her to calm my nerves on Wednesday, my English teacher just wrote this, among other things, in a very sweet email to me. "You make the rest of us feel better, ********--that you, who is just so amazing, could be nervous about this! You are going to be wonderful�"

I'm so scared of disappointing her, more than anyone else alive. I'm not even scared of disappointing Josh. Lol. I know he wouldn't be crushed, but she�she would be crushed. I'm even afraid to tell her that I haven't written squat worthy of even being re-read let alone read out loud. I just have to explain that my summer was a bit hectic, considering I spent a good portion of it trying to get the stupid letter from W.

As I mentioned previous to this, the apartment manager told us a bug spray guy is coming to the apartments on Monday to spray and if we'd like him to spray our garage for black widows, he just needs the door opener. My only problem with this is that it is not mandatory to do this at least once a year, and I'm pretty convinced with the absolute clutter and trash building up in some of these garages, that someone is unknowingly or knowingly breeding them. It won't do much good if the person 3 doors down from ours who has not gone in their garage for over 6 months has 20 with 20 egg sacs, and 4000 deadly gross critters waiting to run around in our stuff, now will it? Ugh�gross. (sorry yuck�I'm traumatizing myself with that thought)

The temperatures dropped drastically and it is not as warm as it should be in August. It has been so cold the past few days that the combination is apparently perfect for big storms. Tornadoes have sprung up both north and south of here, not more than 15 miles away. It's raining outside right now, and my honest-to-whoever biggest fear regarding the weather right now is a tornado at night, because I wouldn't have time to see it and head for the bathtub.

I still need to clean my room.

And I need to stop worrying about Wednesday.

And I miss Josh�

:-(

okay, it's 3:48am in Colombia, I'm going to sleep�

~e

it's a childhood friend's birthday today...Happy Birthday Jerilyn...wherever she is. She made first grade bearable, back when volunteering for Kindergarten teachers to help glitterize paper wall objects was the biggest form of available 'ambassadorness'...and we did it. lol. Too bad I can't include that on my resume.