Shannon > Recent Status Updates

Oh Aren, you cad.

Hey, you know what's a good idea when you're running for your life in a dystopian world where you don't know if you can find enough food the next day? Having sex. Because, you know, you don't get pregnant the first time. Everybody knows that.

Some gems from this page:

I've run out of words. My pockets are full of letters I can't string together ...

I want to fall asleep to the sound of his heart beating in the atmosphere.

His eyes are a midnight moment filled with memories, the only windows into my world.

His heart is racing so fast I can't distinguish it from my own. It's 5,000 degrees in the air between us.

Really, now. 5,000 degrees? I wish she had thrown a "literally" in there too, would have made it perfect.

My head is on the seat, his frame hovering over me, his hands gripping my hips from under my tattered dress and I'm licked by a million flames of wanting so desperate I can hardly inhale. He's a hot bath, a short breath, 5 days of summer pressed into 5 fingers writing stories on my body. I'm an embarrassing mess of nerves crashing into him, controlled by one current of electricity coursing through my core.

"You never fought back," he says after a moment. "I always wondered why. You never yelled or got angry or tried to say anything to anyone," he says, and I know we're both back in third fourth fifth sixth seventh eighth ninth grade all over again. "But damn, you must've read a million books."

Alright, so I guess that's Mafi's reasoning for why Juliette thinks the way she does, because she read books. Uh huh.

I'm suddenly desperate to drink in every drop of his being, desperate to savor every moment I've never known before. I suddenly worry that there's an expiration date on this phenomenon.
The possibility of losing him
The possibility of losing him
The possibility of losing him is 100 years of solitude I don't want to imagine.
Realization is a pendulum the size of the moon. It won't stop slamming into me.

Ok, now that was stupid. Juliette can protect herself more than any man with a gun can. Ugh, I'm done with this for the night.

I thought maybe Mafi wouldn't continue with the Rogue similarities, but it seems I was wrong.

Juliette, why are you believing anything Warner says? Especially about Adam?

I am sitting in a blue room.
The walls are wallpapered in cloth the color of a perfect summer sky, the floor tucked into a carpet 2 inches thick, the entire room empty but for 2 velvet chairs punched out of a constellation. Every varying hue is like a bruise, like a beautiful mistake ...

You know that first sentence, where you said the room was blue? Yeah, that was sufficient.

His body presses closer and I realize I'm paying attention to nothing but the dandelions blowing wishes in my lungs.

...

Wut.

I'd like to cry into his eyes.

o_O

I KNOW WHAT THIS IS NOW: inspired by Diablo Cody. Am I right or am I right?

You do not write your life with words, the monster said. You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.

Thank fucking god this is over.

One evening after her bath, Haley pulled me aside, wracked with guilt: "Mommy wanted to know who ate all the turtle-shaped bagel pizzas, and I knew it was you, but I lied and said it was me." She burst into tears. I hugged her and told her, "You can never tell her the truth." And then I let her stay up an extra hour watching Lizzie McGuire. Bribes and boy bands. That's all you need to be a babysitter.

The reason that I was better than other babysitters was that I would never rush them. In me they had an open-minded listener to every pro and con of spending the rest of their lives with each band member of 'N Sync. I may have gotten more out of it than they did.

I'm not one of those women who melts when a baby enters the room and immediately knows all the right age-specific questions to ask. I always assume the wrong things and offend someone. "Does he speak yet? Does what he says make sense, or is it still gurgle-babble?" Also, I'm always worried I'm going to accidentally scratch a kid with my fingernail or something.

I didn't want to be Regis or Kathie Lee, because their chairs were too high. I'm sorry, I'm supposed to sit like that for an hour? Too much blood rushing to my ankles. No, thanks.

One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about.

Mavis was my Saturday friend, which meant she came over to my house Saturday and we spent the afternoon watching television together. The Church Lady's catchphrases were our catchphrases, and we repeated them until my mother said, exasperated: "Please stop saying 'Isn't that special?' in that strange voice. It is annoying to me and to others."

The chorus of "Jack and Diane" is: Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.
Are you kidding me? The thrill of living was high school? Come on, Mr. Cougar Mellencamp. Get a life.

I wish there was a song called "Nguyen and Ari," a little ditty about a hardworking Vietnamese girl who helps her parents with the franchised Holiday Inn they run, and does homework in the lobby, and Ari, a hardworking Jewish boy who does volunteer work at his grandmother's old-age home, and they meet after school at Princeton Review.

As it is, I guess I find "Jack and Diane" a little disgusting. As a child of immigrant professionals, I can't help but notice the wasteful frivolity of it all. Why are these kids not home doing their homework? Why aren't they setting the table for dinner or helping out around the house? Who allows their kids to hang out in parking lots? Isn't that loitering?

Note: if you want to seem like a super-creepy person, be an adult, by yourself, taking photos of children and people on a beach.

Frisbee is one of the few sports artsy kids like to do, so we've inevitably crossed paths. The afternoon becomes "unlocking Mindy's passion for Frisbee," instead of letting me lie on the grass reading my chick lit book. How dare you? If I had thought learning Frisbee was a valuable thing to do, I would've done it. I don't want to learn! I don't want to learn! Let me read Shopaholic Runs for Congress in peace!

I rode my bike, for hours, around the parking lot behind Beth Shalom. Let me remind you that this was before iPods. This was even before those bright yellow sports Walkmans. With no music to listen to, I just biked around in circles talking to myself like a kid on the cover of a Robert Cormier young adult novel, circling around puzzled Jewish families walking back to their cars. This is how I learned to ride a bike.

If my parents have any soft spot, it is for books, and I knew that the best way to get out of chores, or sports, or talking to elderly relatives on the phone was by holding up a book and saying, "But I'm just enjoying Little House on the Prairie so much!" I may have read the entire Laura Ingalls Wilder canon simply to get out of raking the lawn with my brother.