Cabin Fever

I am so ready to go someplace, anyplace that's not here. I love the sunny days but it would be nice to be in a different place, like DePere or maybe even Pulaski. I hoped to win the lottery last week so I could afford to run away from home, but some, some person in Iowa or someplace like that won my money, the philistine. Now I'm stuck here with ugly carpeting and no chocolate ice cream.

January 19--Jacoba van Heemskerck, Tree. Tally slammed through the back door and dumped her backpack on the floor. She kicked off her orange canvas high tops and stomped into the kitchen making as much noise as it was possible to make when a person was only sixty-three pounds, eleven years old, and in her stocking feet. Her mother, Vivian, looked up from the cookbook she was reading like a novel. "What's the matter, dear?" she asked. Tally flung herself into the chair across from her mother and said, "Mrs. Brewster is stupid and I hate her." Vivian frowned. "You know I don't like those words, Natalie. Stupid and hate are too hurtful to use casually. Now please rephrase." Tally looked at her mother as if she couldn't believe that vocabulary was her first concern. The eleven year old sat up straight and said, "I am displeased with Mrs. Brewster." "Much better. Why?" Tally slid a piece of paper across the table. "We had to cut tiny pieces of colored paper and make a mosaic. She hated mine." Vivian looked at the paper. Sinuous dark blue lines surged up the center of the page then split and spread to encircle patches of red, gold, green, white and gray. She turned the page this way and that hoping for a hint as to what it was supposed to be but she was clueless. "What is it supposed to be, honey?" Tally's eyes rolled back in despair and she slid off her chair onto the floor as she said, "It's a tree." "Oh," Vivian said. She still couldn't tell the top from the bottom. She bent down to peer at her daughter slumped on the floor. "Are you sure this is your paper?" Tally groaned. "Yes, mother, just let me lay here and die." Vivian stood up. "Okay, but I made some chocolate pudding. Sure you won't have some before you expire?" Tally sat up. "Maybe just a little."

I do like Tally. She's always been so dramatic.
--Barbara