Olivia Junior

“I was with book, as a woman is with child.”

- C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

This is a pretty accurate analogy of writing. First you conceive the idea. Then it grows and grows inside of you until the bulge of it is hanging there right in front of you whatever you do. You experience strange cravings and sensations. It keeps you up at night. Then the birth pangs come, and there's nothing you can do--you just have to sit and write and write and write and write, all the while wondering if you're going to survive this--until finally, the whole thing is out of you. And when everything is through and you cradle your creation--your own flesh and blood and tears and sweat--in your arms, you forget the past hours and days and weeks and months of pain, and all you know is joy...

Okay, so it's not quite as great as that, because the next morning when you read over what you've written you often realize it's a whole lot more terrible than you remembered. I hope a mother doesn't do that.

Anyway, you witnessed the childbirth process a month ago in my post Stages of an Essay (don't worry--it's nothing graphic) and now I'm following up with the result.

I'm applying for a camp this summer held by a vet school for incoming juniors and seniors interested in the veterinary field. As part of the application students had to write an essay five hundred words or less about what area(s) of veterinary medicine they were interested in and why.

So here is my child. 499 words. And my firstborn essay*.

Unfortunately, they aren't interested in artwork, so my little masterpiece was not included.

***

     When we were young children, my friends and I had a vast array of plastic and plush horses. We formed racing stables and cattle ranches and wild horse herds, and whenever a horse fell ill or hurt itself,  I was the one to prescribe various cough syrups and poultices, or experiment with some innovative procedure made up on the spot. Over time I acquired a small library of books like The Complete Equine Veterinary Manual, The Horseman’s Veterinary Encyclopedia, and The Comprehensive Guide to Equine Veterinary Medicine. I lugged these volumes to our play dates and referenced them to give more accurate treatments to my plastic patients.

    I was unperturbed by the graphic images in those manuals of festering wounds and animals mid-operation with their bowels splayed across the table. Each morning I poured my cereal in a rush to make it to the TV in time for that day’s episode of Emergency Vets, and happily munched Cheerios while watching a cesarean section performed on a Labrador Retriever. I failed to understand why my mother was so disturbed by this.

     When I was eight or nine, I was given a little money to spend at a used book sale held by our homeschool group. As I browsed one of the tables, my eyes fell upon the heftiest volume: a tenth grade biology textbook. It was love at first sight. The best part? It was just fifty cents, perfectly within my limited budget. Passersby grinned as I proudly staggered off under its weight.

     Over the years, little has changed. My vision of an ideal Friday night still involves curling up on the sofa with a science textbook. To my parents’ dismay—and that of their wallet—my love of horses didn’t wane either. At the age of eleven, after years of riding lessons and horse camp, I adopted the pony I had gentled at a local horse rescue. She was a spooky mare that had run feral on a mountainside for nearly a decade. Over time I had earned her trust, and I taught her a number of tricks, including giving kisses, swishing her tail on command, answering “yes” and “no” to questions, and dancing the hokey pokey. The two horses I’ve acquired since then have learned a few things watching her, but so far they haven’t quite figured out the hokey pokey.

     The veterinarians around me have been very supportive, perhaps empathetic to what others see as a  slightly disturbing fascination with animal innards. I was invited to sit by and watch a foal at a nearby riding stable undergo surgery to repair an umbilical hernia, following step-by-step in a surgery manual. When it was time for my own colt to be gelded, our veterinarian handed me the emasculator and allowed me to perform one half of the operation myself. My horse still hasn’t forgiven me for it.

    I would be happy in any field of veterinary medicine, but I feel equine practice is what I’m meant to do.

***

Yep. I'm a homeschooler.

*That's right, I never had to write a formal essay before this. Aren't I lucky? I did write other scholarly stuff, but I wrote those of my own accord, which made them nerdy.

The Gullibility of Olivia Longfellow

Note: Longfellow is not actually my last name, but such a title needed a last name, and not wanting to put my actual last name on the internet, I resolved to make one up.

Now on to your regularly scheduled post.

All over the internet, amid compilations of random facts or useless information, I had come across the statement that the commonly used word gullible is not in the dictionary.

When I first saw this, I scoffed, for of course the word gullible is in the dictionary, and I questioned the credibility of the other facts listed. The next time I saw it I wondered if perhaps the word was commonly misspelled, and the proper way was to omit one L, but I was busy and went about my tasks for the day without consulting the dictionary.

When I came across this piece of information again, I double checked to be sure I was, in fact, spelling gullible properly. There it was on dictionary.com: "gullible - adjective - easily deceived or cheated."

I was so perturbed by this, that such blatantly false information was circulating the internet, that I brought it to the attention of my mother.

"Mother," I said, "I don't understand. I keep seeing this thing that gullible is not in the dictionary. But it's on dictionary dot com!"

Here, she grinned.

I stared blankly, wondering what was so funny.

"Olivia," she began.

And then I got it.

We fell in heaps laughing.

Gullible! The dictionary! I looked up gullible in the dictionary! This was a trick and I fell for it!

Of course, all this was a trick meant purely for the amusement of my mother. Of course.

I would never actually fall for anything like that.

It was just a... blonder than usual... moment.

Postscript:

It's Monday!

The day of music!

A psaltery and guitar ensemble, it says*, of Waltz from Masquerade by Aram Khachaturian.

*Well, Google Translate says it says. 

Post of Shame

Olivia has a blog, doesn't she?

Oops. She forgetted. And now she is so ashamed she is writing in the third person, because it is shameful to say "I forgot", but speaking this way it sounds as though someone else forgot, not Olivia. Also, she is so ashamed she can't even use proper grammar--hence why she forgetted and not forgot.

So this is the post of shame.

Part of the reason for her absence is that she hasn't been able to think of anything to write about. Actually, that's probably the reason for every absence of hers. Nothing too big or exciting goes on in her life to blog about.

But then it occurred to her that nothing terribly big or exciting happens in the lives of most of the bloggers whose blogs she follows. They just write about the little things in life, for the most part. She's going to try to start writing about the little things, too. So for practice, here's a little thing that happened to her.

On the Monday of yesterweek, Olivia thirsted, so to quench her thirst she went on a quest for tea. Her quest took her to the far away Pantry in the land of Kitchen. In Pantry, she found that which she sought--Canned Tea. In fact, there were two Canned Teas, nestled peacefully together in their dwelling of a long, narrow cardboard box.

Olivia extended her arm through the open door of their house and groped for a Tea. But the two Teas held fast in the bottom of their box. She lifted the whole box, with her arm still inside, and carried it across the land of Kitchen to the high ridge called Counter. There she could set down the box and extricate the Teas inside.

But on the way she did not see the stealthy Empty Box that lurked on the Plain of Tile. It pounced, setting itself directly in the path of her feet.

She flailed her arms wildly in a desperate attempt to maintain her balance. Finally, with her free hand (for her other arm held still the box of Tea) she managed to grasp hold of the edge of Counter. Thus she righted herself, and proceeded to drink a Tea.

While she escaped, ultimately, the wrath of the Empty Box, it inflicted lasting wounds. A muscle in her torso, across her side, has been pulled, and pains her to some degree to this day. In time, however, this wound is expected to heal.

And so concludes the Tale of the Empty Box Attacking the Bearer of the Tea.

Readers Around the World

As you can see, I am an adept cartographer. And I kind of
forgot what the rest of the world looks like...

According to my Stats tab, today readers from the US, Canada, India, Malaysia, Australia, and Slovenia have viewed this blog; this week I've had readers from the UK, the Netherlands, Greece, Egypt, and New Zealand; this month I've had readers from Haiti and South Africa, and in the past I've also had readers from the Ukraine.

It was sort of shocking that people from so many places had entered this compilation of nonsensical rambles!

If you're one of my international readers, I'd love it if you could drop a comment! If you're from the US, I'd like your comments anyways. =P

Week Two Woes

Another stunning masterpiece by yours truly.

I'm behind in Script Frenzy, so naturally, I'm here blogging about it. What is it about the second week of these things (Script Frenzy, NaNoWriMo, you name it) that is so agonizing?

The first week you dive in to a brand new script (or novel or what have you) aflame with passion for your story, keen to let the words flow into your ink (or pixels). You're zipping along, racing furiously after that fluffy plot bunny*, consistently passing your daily quota, when suddenly Week Two hits. That cute, fluffy, wubbable wittle plot bunny was really leading you into a trap--and you fall into the gaping plot hole it placed in your path. 

The darkness inside the hole is disorienting, and you can't even string together a halfway-coherent sentence. Unable to see, you panic, running to and fro and hitting the hard wall of the hole every time. Your characters ditch you, leaving you to rot and die. You crawl into a hole (wait, you're already in a hole...) and go to sleep.

When you wake, it's Week Three. The morning shines brightly, birds sing, and you're like, "Now wait a minute. I can climb out of this hole. I can climb out of this hole! Why didn't I think of that before?!" And you get up and climb out of the hole.

(At least, that's what most NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy participants seem to claim they find in the third week. I usually find Week Three the worst. But anyway.)

And then, Week Four is usually a blur as you zoom to the finish line. Or, for some, it's blurry from the tears you shed because you didn't win.

So anyway, it's Week Two. I'm not sure I'm all the way down in a hole, but I've hit a rut, definitely. (And I can't form a coherent sentence, which is evident in the quality of this post.) My state of stuckness, though, is mainly caused by my own nerdiness. Chemistry is just too much fun! Who wants to write when one can be learning about matter and its phases?!

The only reason I haven't done any chemistry today, in fact, is because I've been saving it as a reward for catching up to my page-count quota. Which means I really need to close Blogger and open Celtx**, because I am itching to get the scoop on why exactly water expands when it freezes...

But before I go, here's your daily dose of nerdiness.

* If you don't know what a plot bunny is, see ZNZ's explanation.
** Celtx is a wonderful script-writing software and my BFF during April.

20 of the Reasons Why I Am An Atypical Teenager

I decided to copy some of my blogger
friends by making illustrations in Paint.
This is actually a very true-to-life
representation.





1. I don't pay mind to fashion trends.
2. I don't own a single article of clothing produced by Abercrombie & Fitch, Aeropostale, or American Eagle. Go cheap no-name brands.
3. I don't own a single article of clothing made of denim. No jeans, no overalls, no denim skirts, shirts, or jackets. You're probably wondering now what my wardrobe could possibly consist of. See figure at right.
4. I don't torture myself with high heels.
5. I don't pay more to wear less.
6. My parents become concerned enough to check on me when I sleep past nine, and would probably declare me braindead if I slept much later.
7. I am perhaps the only human being who is not overly fond of pizza. This can be an inconvenience at social gatherings.
8. TV? I've heard of it... I think.
9. I can count on one hand the instances I have played a video game.
10. I don't have a boyfriend, have never had a boyfriend, and have absolutely no desire to have a boyfriend for quite some time.
11. I don't own a cell phone.
12. I frequently engage in conversation with adults, and often find such conversations quite enjoyable. Often more so than those with people of my own age. Though exceptions exist, of course.
13. I make eye contact.
14. I have no intentions of ever drinking alcohol, smoking, et cetera.
15. I have never worn make-up.
16. My hair care regimen consists of shampooing, rinsing, drying, and brushing.
17. My ears are not pierced, nor any other body parts.
18. I possess no desire to drive, and have not made the slightest step toward achieving a permit.
19. If I did drive, let's just say the results would be... quite frightening. (Oh wait. That's not atypical.)
20. I cannot walk over a flat, stable, obstacle-free surface without meeting the ground up-close and personal. Gravity loves me, what can I say?
21. I adore my schooling. One might say I am obsessed, even.

Please note that I don't necessarily frown upon all these things. There's nothing wrong with liking pizza or owning a cell phone. I'm mainly just listing my weirdness.

Do you have any to add? Do any of these apply to you?

And if none do... well, I won't come at you with a baseball bat or anything. ;)