One was about lotus-eaters, people who eat flowers. When Odysseus and his men visited them, his men ate a bunch of lotus flowers and it made them forget all about their home and their loved ones and they wanted to stay with the lotus-eaters forever. (I wonder if that’s what happened to ole Derek!!??) But Odysseus forces them back on their ship and he ties them to some benches and they leave. (They’re trying to get home after they’ve sacked all these cities.)
Then they come to the land of the Cyclopes, a weird group who live in caves and don’t have any laws. Odysseus and some of his men go up to the cave of this horrible one-eyed monster Cyclops, and pretty soon this Cyclops starts smashing a couple of the men on the ground and tears out their arms and legs and stuff and eats them. (Ugh.) That’s for supper. He does it again for breakfast. Finally, Odysseus (who, if you ask me, brags a little too much about his cleverness) comes up with this great plan. He tells the monster his name is “Noman,” and then he gets the monster drunk and pokes his eye out with this huge burning club. Homer really gets into all the gory details too, about the eye bubbling and hissing and all. It’s a little too much for me.
But the best part is when this monster’s friends all come and start calling to him, asking why he is screaming and stuff. And he says that “Noman” (no man, get it?) is killing him, and since his friends think that no man is killing him, they go away. Anyway, they all (or at least the ones who haven’t been eaten) finally do escape through Odysseus’s plan (he’s real proud of it) of tying them underneath some sheep and goats who are in the cave and will be let out in the morning. It’s a little hard to imagine.
The only thing I don’t like about Odysseus is that he brags so much about how clever he is and how many cities he sacked and how many people he killed. I think he’d be put in jail if he were alive today.
Another rainy, cloudy day.
Alex called, but he couldn’t come over because he’s got the flu. I bet he caught it at his grandmother’s birthday party. He said the party was a real bore except for the part when she opened the present from Alex’s grandfather (her husband). It was a black negligee!! Imagine.
Not a real exciting day here. Mom left us all a note today saying we had to wash all the windows in the whole entire house. We called her at work to tell her it was raining, but she said we had to do the insides anyway. The worst thing is, you can’t really SEE how much work we did, because the windows are still all dirty on the outside. I hope it’s still raining tomorrow. I don’t think I could take another day of smelling that vinegar and toiling my arm off.
I miss Alex Cheevey. Sigh.
Beth Ann is still calling a million times a day. She has written and torn up about fifty letters to Derek. Her latest plan is to make Derek jealous, but she doesn’t exactly know how she’s going to do it.
She also told me something that really surprised me. Christy (from school) called her. They’re not even friends or anything. Anyway, Christy was yakking away about a bunch of nonsense and she told Beth Ann some “secret” news that Beth Ann wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. Beth Ann told me though. This secret news is that Christy, Megan, and a bunch of other goony girls like them have formed a club called GGP and they can’t tell ANYONE what GGP stands for. And Christy told Beth Ann that Beth Ann was “under consideration” for membership in this stupid club.
That really made me mad.
First of all, why Beth Ann? Why not me? Not that I would join their stupid GGP anyway. They know Beth Ann and I are best friends. What are they trying to do, anyway? Beth Ann thinks they will probably call me too, but I can’t believe it. I told Beth Ann that I didn’t want to join their stupid GGP, and I asked Beth Ann if she was going to join if they asked her to, and she said she didn’t know. As if maybe she might. I said, “Without me?” And she said, “Oh, I don’t know!”
Mrs. Furtz came over after dinner tonight to ask my dad if he would kill a spider in her kitchen. I thought my dad would laugh at her, but he said, “Why, of course,” and off he went and she waited here and when Dad came back, she started crying and saying how she was so pathetic and helpless and didn’t think she could go on. Mom and Dad talked with her for about three hours in the kitchen, and they sent Maggie over to put her kids to bed. It was pretty sad. She looks horrible. You’d think the gods might have taken into account how much Mr. Furtz was needed at home.
Mom keeps asking Carl Ray when he is going to let his parents know about the money and the college education. Carl Ray has been saying, “Pretty soon,” but tonight he said he thought he would surprise them. He wants to take a week off work and drive home to show them his new car. He hasn’t asked his boss (the old Mr. Furtz’s brother) yet, though.
I’ve decided not to read the Odyssey at night anymore. I had such awful dreams last night. Someone was chasing me with this enormous pointed stick, trying to poke my eye out, and I was almost trampled to death by a herd of goats. So I read some Robert Frost poems tonight. I won’t write in red ink because I don’t understand poetry very well.
Robert Frost doesn’t seem to have a very big vocabulary. I bet he didn’t do very well in English. But once you get used to his poems, they’re okay. I’ve always liked that one about stopping by the woods on a snowy night. We’ve had to read it (and memorize it) just about every year in English. I swear, it’s every English teacher’s favorite poem.
Last year in English class we had a big fight over it, because Mrs. Zollar was talking about the symbolism in it and asking people what they thought the road and the woods symbolized. People were saying some pretty strange things. I could see how the woods could be death, but why would he think they were so beautiful? Then someone said, Well maybe the woods symbolized “fun”—like he wants to go have fun, but he can’t because he has so many more miles to go. Well, that was stretching it, I thought, but it was possible. Then people got carried away and started saying maybe the woods represented ice cream or surfing and someone even said they symbolized sex and it was all getting out of control and finally Bonnie Argentini said that the whole thing was ridiculous and maybe Robert Frost just meant for the woods to be woods and it made her sick how everyone was always trying to say what the author meant when no one could possibly know. Then Billy Kroger told her to shut up, that she was too dense to see the “hidden meaning,” and it all went to pot after that, with people shouting and stuff, and you could tell Mrs. Zollar was sorry she ever brought it up.
Mr. Furtz is in the woods, but I have miles to go before I sleep.
Oh groannn. Can’t write. Have the flu.
Still feel lousy but at least have stopped throwing up. Talked to Alex. He’s all better.
I’ve recovered. Now Dennis and Dougie are sick.
I finally saw Alex again today, but I couldn’t go anywhere with him because I had to help Maggie take care of Dennis and Dougie, who are throwing up all over the place. It’s disgusting.
But Alex and I did get to be alone for about ten whole minutes. Sighhhhh. Here’s what happened. We were sitting on the front porch, and he said, “I like it when you wear that pink shirt.” (I was wearing a pink T-shirt.) I never thought boys noticed what girls wore. I thought I could wear a trash bag and no boy would ever know the difference. And then Alex reached over and touched the sleeve of my shirt, as if he was checking out its pinkness or something. Well, when he touched that sleeve, I thought, Oh boy, this is it, he’s going to kiss me now. I could just feel it coming. I was dissolving into a blithering idiot.