11:20 pm

You may ask why I am up so late, after a long day of school, when I have to get up at an ungodly hour when the Spirit is Still Asleep. (If the Spirit retires exactly at midnight, it logically follows that He is still probably asleep at 5:15 am.)

It is because My mom is making me do the dinner dishes. I complained until she threatened privelege removal.

Dad felt sorry for me and so he gave me a bowl of Jelly Bellies to make my dish-doing more pleasant.

I started at 10:30 and am am almost finished now. A family of eight people makes a lot of dishes.

I just have the forks and spoons to wash, and only four jelly bellies left. (jalapeno, peanut butter, and buttered popcorn. I can't eat buttered popcorn jelly bellies because when I watched the movie White Fang for the first time I ate a popcorn-flavored jelly belly just as they showed the shot of that dead guy in the coffin underwater. So buttered popcorn jelly bellies to me = corpses.)

Anyway, my church freind Ella has convinced me to join the cross-country ski team. Don't ask me how she did it. She only had ten minutes between seventh and eight period and somehow accomplished it in that short amount of time.

I've never done a real team sport before. Well, OK, I take that back. I was on the track team in jr high. But I was the only girl sprinter. Sometimes I was the only girl sprinter at the entire track meet. So I'd race against myself. It was a little embarrassing. Plus I wasn't that good.

So I bet I'll be good at endurance sports. They say you're either one or the other. That's what they say.

Anyway, there's a team meeting tomorrow. I'm worried I won't be able to get my gargantuan load of homework done what with all the extra time spent at team practices. Maybe mom will let me drop AP History if I complain enough.

On the plus side, that means I don't have to ride the bus home anymore, because practices go until after the busses leave. I ride the boonies bus, and it takes a little over an hour to get home. So maybe it will all even out, time-wise.

OK, I feel better now. On to the forks and spoons.

Those popcorn jelly bellies are looking tempting. But I know better. I already tried one tonight and it nearly made me vomit.