14

I am now 14. And therefore, obviously, more awesome than I was before I was 14.

The party was very fun. I am really bad at bowling. But it was fun even though I am very bad at bowling. There was pizza and ice cream cake.

My friends know me so well. They all got me books and index cards & pens. Also washi tape. Awesome.

On my actual birthday, we went bike shopping in the morning. Then we went to PF Chang's for lunch where I had crispy honey chicken and an amazing dessert that had peanut butter in it. Afterwards we went back to the bike place to pick the bike up. When we got home we went for a bike ride.

After riding it a few times, I decided to name her Phyllis. Like in the Flavia de Luce books, Flavia's bike is named Gladys. I think it's so cute.


I invited my friend Lindsey over to help me rearrange my books, since the current arrangement didn't allow space for additions, and I know that she is the kind of awesome person who would actually want to do that.

We had already deshelved my other books and were trying to decide how to organize all of them (we went for alphabetical by the first letter of the author's last name). I picked up one of the new books and said, "hey, I haven't even smelled these yet!" and proceeded to sniff them. "I think this one smells the best," I said, setting the book down. 

"Let me smell," said Lindsey. After a moment she said, "I agree. Fahrenheit 451 definitely smells the best." 

We laughed. We are such dorks. I love that.

Needless to say, now I am reading Fahrenheit 451.

I quite like it so far.

Anyway.

Thanks, guys.

I had an awesome birthday.

Beautiful Wall Collage

I finished it!

Isn't it TOTALLY AWESOME?!  You can't see everything perfectly, but the stuff I've added to it since that post where I told you about awesome stuff I've been doing is: some bottle cap thingies, the AIA cover I already told you about, a star wheel (the white circle thing), a Looking for Alaska cover (under the a), and a Glinda of Oz cover that I made (I didn't trace it I promise! You can find close up pictures of that on my tumblr.). So yeah!

(Coming up: Beautiful Bookshelf)

So i joined the swim team...

I guess because I can. I mean, I know how to swim, but I don't know how to
swim, you know? Well, didn't, anyway. I've learned to much already and have only gone to two practices. I can successfully do the breast stroke, the butterfly, freestyle, and the backstroke (although probably not very well). I think the breast stroke is actually the hardest. Pull, breathe, kick, glide. Maybe because I basically taught myself how to do it from watching other people swim and then had to re-learn it, but the butterfly, which I had no clue how to do before, I find surprisingly easy. (Edit: not to say that the butterfly is easy. At all. It was just much easier that I thought it was going to be.)

And I really like coach Larry. He's hilarious.

And I really like it so far.

And I am really kinda proud of myself. I don't try new things that often.

And yeah. Yayyyyy!


(Coming up: beautiful wall collage [when {if} I finish it])

An Imperial Affliction

The epigraph of one of my favorite books, "The Fault in Our Stars," is from a book called "An Imperial Affliction":

As the tide washed in, the Dutch Tulip Man faced the ocean:
"Conjoiner rejoinder prisoner concealer revelator. Look at it, rising up and rising down, taking everything with it."
"What's that?" I asked.
"Water," said the Dutchman. "Well, and time."

It's the perfect start to the book.

Hazel, the main character of The Fault in Our Stars, lives and breathes An Imperial Affliction. She's read it probably a hundred times. She travels to Amsterdam with Augustus Waters to find the book's long lost author, Peter Van Houten.

An Imperial Affliction is not an actual book.

You can imagine me, full of the buzz you get when you finish a really good book, sitting at the computer and googling over and over again: An Imperial Affliction. Peter Van Houten. Sitting in disbelief that this wonderful thing does not, in all actuality, exist on the face of the earth.

People design covers for it all the time.It's kind of real now because we know what it's about and what it might look like, but we will not know how Hazel felt when she read it the first time, because we can not read it the first time ourselves. Constantly googling pictures of covers others had designed, I did not feel fulfilled. Of course, I still won't because I have not read the actual book An Imperial Affliction because it does not exist.

Something was missing from my bookshelf.

So I made it. Sort of.

Of course, it's just the dust jacket. The pages inside do not tell the story of Anna. The narrative doesn't end in the middle of a sentence like it's 

But I think it is happy with my other books. And I designed the whole thing all by myself and without using a computer once. So I win.

The Pool

I stood in line with my cousin Andy who is my age to go off the diving board.

"You know, papa used to do flips off these," he said.

"Really? Wow."

"At least that's what grandma Judy said."

"You know today is his birthday?"

"Man, nobody ever tells me anything!"

"Yup. July 7th. 7-7. I think he was born in 1947 or something," I said.

"I wish he was here."

"Me too."