Kick Drum Heart


Oh hot damn

My jam was on during homecoming, and after. I can barely remember it all; the evening flew by in a hazy blur of neon and glowsticks and thumping heavy bass.

The afterparty at my house was fun, albeit extremely dirty, conversation-wise, and a little tense. Everyone was so hyped up.

For all it was an unusual crew, the chemistry really caught, though. There are instances in a social situation where the atmosphere sometimes lags or starts charging with unpleasantry or awkwardness. That didn’t happen. I halfway expected it to, but I guess the friends who came were just so mentally flexible and comfortable that it didn’t have to. Bobby, Colyn, Grubbs, and Dave don’t always hang out with me; Chelsea and Tara and Sam are used to Post, Trank, and Taylor and vice versa; Jimmy, Jill, Aaron, Sarah, Cayleigh and Samuelson are all underclassmen. Harley doesn’t even go to Gowanda. Still, I was prepared to ask everyone to play nice. But aside from eating the entirety of the ninety dollars worth of food and forgetting to put the toilet seat back down, it was a blast and ran really smoothly.

For a last homecoming, I was satisfied. And it really enlightened me, that I soooo need to relax. It was fun to have the time to hang out with friends. Being busy every waking second haunts me. I can’t do it. I think of Caitlin, who was confused when I told her about everything I’ve been up to– she sits at home all the time. She’s used to peace, and doing what she wants. Okay, I know I could never just do nothing, but she honestly didn’t understand when I referred to being so busy. That shocked me.

It’s also nagging at me that Emily has so much free time. I’m not jealous or cranky about her: I’m peeved that this seems so much like a “sign.” She gave up something, and now she doesn’t miss it. She can relax or do something equally productive; that time got filled up and well-used. Seeing her cute little laptop was very like a cosmic sign (if I believed in them), just like Caitlin’s confusion.

So. When Heather ordered me last week to delete something from my schedule, I elbowed past my original doubtful thoughts and made my choice. Damn it, signs.

And see ya around, creative writing. If I have to go talk to Dr. Bob in person to get this solidified, I will. I’m fully prepared to give him the same spiel I gave Mr. Shannon: I’m too effing busy. Something’s gotta give, and I’ll be damned if it’s the musical or my college auditions and applications. So sorry, Ms. Giancola. I’m out.

I know I can write. I enjoyed the classwork, the brain poking. It kept my mind running. But this year I’m truthfully so busy that it pokes at itself all the time on its own. Story ideas can come when I get some free time. And it’s true, I’d love to write a novel. But that doesn’t change the fact that writing is my backup plan and singing will be my career.

So there you have it: in all likelihood I will have freed up forty minutes every other day to do what I need or want. Voila, yippie skippie. Hopefully it will make a difference, but if it doesn’t… band is next on my list. XD



Lemon cleaner

Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.

The fresh puffs of lemony-pine wood cleaner skimming through the air, wildly guitar-laden strains of Chickenfoot and Pat Benatar flying at me, and the disinfected gleam of my room’s Pergo oak flooring all are calling to me this morning.

It’s not even nine, and I’ve been bumming around the house for an hour wanting to get down in my little cupboard below the stairs and chisel away at the mess that’s accumulated since the flood. I haven’t had the time or inclination to pick any of it up.

Now that I have more (more!) new clothes (and I’m feeling not only a female smugness because I’m going to look good this year, but a little uncomfortable trickle of guilt because I have so many new clothes), I’m getting the urge to make the place look inhabitable. I’m going to be a senior after all, seventeen years old next month, and my room looks like a regular pig sty. It should be spic and span and spiffy. Sophisticated, with a delicate trace of clutter (I really am a weird artist, when you get down to it, and personally if something’s too perfect I have to smudge it up a little.)

So after I shower in maybe five minutes, I’m traipsing down, jamming to guitar riffs, and hopefully making the place suitable for my last full year at home.

Oh God oh God.

My last full year at home.

Okay, so it’s just started to hit me that Emma and Hannah and Kiener are off to college, finally. They’re gone, they’re in their dorms, they start classes Monday.

Exactly a year from now, That Will Be Me.

So holy shit holy shit holy shit.



So you think you can love me and leave me to die ?

As I sit here jamming to the piercing guitar riffs of Queen, I think on the possibilities the future has to offer. What’s new, right? I do that on a daily basis. Lately, though, it’s started to hit me… in a few short weeks I will be considered a senior, or at least in the transition to one. I will be preparing to enter my final year of high school.

I don’t want to! But in the same breath I do; I desperately, desperately do. I want to go out to experience what life has to offer, I want to leave my mark on the world. I want to be my own person, my own individual.

But I’ll miss not living with my family and seeing my friends daily when I’m away in college. I know I will make new friends, but what of the old ones? What will happen?

Anything can happen in that last year of school. Everything or nothing can change me, mold me into the person I will be when I leave for college.

I’m eager, and yet I’m terrified. What if I fail? Or, what if I succeed?

I know I’m not making much sense at the moment, but I didn’t start this blog with a set sense of what I wanted to write about in mind. It just kind of evolved with my stream of consciousness.

In any case, I want to make the most of what time I have left in Gowanda. “Youth is wasted on the young,” they say. Well, I’ll be damned if it’s wasted on me.