The summer from where?

My summer "vacation" has come and gone and here I am back in another new place to live with mixed feelings as I wait for school to start on Monday. A rather large chunk of my summer was spent in agony studying for and taking the GRE, sucking everything out of me in the process, that is with the exception of the dread I would feel every night knowing I had to continue it the next day.

I could be found sitting at these tables bending over these piles of vocab cards everyday.

Another chunk was spent turning green at the grinder while I pulvarized feed samples into a powder that results in hazy air and irritated senses accompanied with itchy rashes in my elbow pits. Although not particularly fun, it was surprisingly a nice reprieve from the hours of studying many days, but other days it just turned me into a She-Hulk--green and grumpy.

I survived the dreary, however, and managed to come out conquerer, because look what I can do now...

The impecunious dilettante pretended to be a polyglot to impress the debutante, but as he spoke garrulously in different languages he didn't know on various pastiches, he made many solecisms. The effronteric girl who was initially excited to find a fellow speaker of her language who also had exorbitant ardor for art felt lugubrious at the boys affection and vituperated him for it, and then made a tangential comment to change the subject.

...make ridiculous long run-on sentences filled with big words I'm not sure I'm using right.

Not only did I survive, but I even managed to have a little bit of fun too. All the family came to visit and see the new house. It was one big party.

My parents and I took a trip to Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia where we did all sorts of fun things, including ZIP LINING!

I also better include the day trip I took with a bunch of friends to Cour de Alene to play in Silverwood.

Yes, apparantly girls still have cooties and boys still come from Mars.

Last and certainly not least, my summer went out with a bang when my old roommate came to visit where we played around Seattle and Moses Lake.

So even though I complain about how unexciting the majority of my summer was, it wasn't all bad at all, and it was definitely memorable, for the better and the worse.

I'm a what?!

It's happened and I kind of died a little bit on the inside when it did, but I beg to differ. I most certainly am not what I have been accused of being...I can't be. I'm not that old yet...right?

To make a not so long and mostly irrelevant story even shorter, a week or so back, a zip lining guide (yup, cause my dad and I went zip lining. No big deal. IT WAS AWESOME!) yelled at me in his mesmerizing Canadian/Irish accent as I zipped off on one of the lines, "You're a well traveled woman!" Little did anybody involved know that such a simple, offhand, harmless statement would be the cause of a bit of internal turmoil I would later feel.

At the time, I was too caught up in the excitement of the swift motion as I was swept off my feet, of the notion of flying as I looked down to see my feet dangling in nothing but air, and of the breathtaking scenery lying peacefully hundreds of feet below me. It wasn't until several days after the fact while I was recreating every moment of my zip lining experience, that I actually heard exactly what that guide said. "You're a well traveled woman." hmmm, something about that statement. It feels weird. "You're a well traveled woman." What is it? "You're a well traveled woman" Wait a second. "You're a well traveled WOMAN." AHHHHHHHH!

But I'm still a little girl! I've never been called a woman before without a "young" preceding it. You could have just as easily inserted girl. Everybody else does. Stop trying to rob me of my youth!

That's what I said to that guide when I marched right back up to that zip lining place to tell him a thing or two. I wanted to make sure things were set right...at least in my head.

Women are supposed to be old, married with children, mature, responsible, accomplished. They're supposed to know exactly where they're going with their life, have accomplished great things, have responsibility and amazing foresight and wisdom. They're supposed be able to handle difficult situations cooly, be the voice of reason, give life-changing advice, and have responsibility. A woman's supposed to be responsible. Did I mention that?

All good qualities, right? Right, but you see, Mr. childhood snatcher, I seem to lack the most vital characteristics of womanhood. I laugh at the wrong things at the wrong times, sometimes I talk about gross things, I'm not so sure about where my life will end up, I currently spend the majority of my days rotting at the table studying or decomposing at the hay grinder. In a matter of weeks I will be constantly entombed in the belly of the library, beginning the transformation from young woman to zombie once again. I talk in a British accent and dance around the house when nobody is looking, I never grew out of my fear of car washes, aka I'm a wimp, and when something scary or hard comes along, I want to hide. Most of all, I'm. not. old. enough.

Some people are visual learners, so just to belabor my point in case you're not catching my drift, allow me to demonstrate my absence of womanhood further.

A real woman

A significant

lack of woman

See the difference?

Thus, Mr. zip lining Canadian/Irish, youth steeling guide person, you have been severely mistaken, because, you see, I am not old enough to be a woman.

right?

I win.

Dear evil, hateful laptop,

It was you, not me. I have moved on, and I'm much happier now. Good riddance.

Michelle