Dear Carnation,

Today was the last day of school and alot has happened.  I asked Curt to the banquet and he said yes, so we went.  (I wore my white dress, by the way.)  There were five couples for the banquet. Everyone else went stag.  It was pretty fun.

There was a time in her that Curt and me were having problems and kept fighting and all that crap.  We are quite over that now.

We have been going together for exactly a month today.  I just had to tell you.

Me and Liz had a really big fight which we wouldn’t speak to eachother for over 24 hours.  We are all over that now, though.  Thank goodness.

On May 30, me, my mom, my sister, and about 14 other people got baptized into the Tacoma South Side Church.  Sara had a slumber party that weekend and I went over after my baptism. It was pretty fun.

Gary got married a few weeks ago.  It was an okay wedding.  Nothing fancy.

Last night was Curt’s 8th grade graduation.  He looked so cute in his new outfit.  He said he didn’t want to look at me during the graduation because I kept making him laugh.  Mikey was in the front row and he farted during the graduation!

Afterward, Curt’s whole family went out for icecream and they invited me so I went.  He has a nice family.  When it was time to go, me and Curt hugged for the first time.  We’ve never held hand, kissed, nothing–until that moment–we hugged.  auggh.  Don’t jump to high out of your seat.  It was nice though.

Today, being that it was the last day of school, everyone was upset.  There was a lot of people crying.  I even cried — 3 times.  The first time I was telling Curt – of all the guy I’ve ever liked, I cared about him the most.  It was my day of confessions to him today.

Then I cried when I said good-bye to Liz.  I don’t know why.  We are going to be seeing each other this summer and stuff.

The last time I cried was when I said good-bye to [the school secretary]. She is such a sweet lady.  I’m really going to miss her next year.

I said my good-byes to everyone.  I was said when I did to Brandon.   I told him a few weeks ago that I love him and he’s like a big brother to me.  I am really gonna miss him next year – alot.

I walked Curt to the bus for the last time today.  I was depressed.  Next year he’s going to boarding school so I won’t see him.  The hilarious thing that happened was when the bus pulled up Curt cam over and gave me a hug. Then we just stood there, holding each other — and as we stood there, the bus drove away.  Ha-ha-ha-ha.  It was funny.  I started laughing so hard that I fell on the ground.  He had to catch a later bus.

I’m glad it ended that way, though, with something funny.  Otherwise I would probably be depressed right now.  It reminds me of that Big Red gum commercial where the people are kissing and their ride leaves them.

Carnation, I just love him so much. I really do.  I don’t want to ever let him go.  I know things between us can never be the same.  I wish he would just stay one more year to be with me.

I should probably go now.  It’s almost eleven o’clock.

Love,

Dear Carnation,

I know, I know.  I haven’t written in here for ages.  Well, a month to be exact.  I’m really sorry about that.  Alot has happened!  We went on our Biology trip to Rosario Beach.  It was an okay trip. I’ll tell you about it later sometime.  [A note from adult Mindi:  This is a lie.]

Also, we moved to our new house.  It is in East Olympia.  My room is pretty cool.  It’s a disaster, as usual.

About a week before we moved away, Colie our cat  ran away. We haven’t seen her since.  I miss her, but I don’t want to cry.  I’ve been crying alot lately.  (I’ll explain later, if I feel like it.)  [A note from adult Mindi:  Apparently, I didn't ever feel like it.]

What else?  Hmmmmmm… well, I’ve received my yearbook.  It was an okay yearbook.  A few people wrote some really raw things in there.

The weather has been pretty hot here lately.  So we go to have – wow! – shorts day.  In my opinion, shorts day should be on whatever day that we students choose to wear shorts.

We had our Fun Run.  I’ll get back to that later.  Everything has been fine with Liz and me.  We haven’t had any fights to speak of lately.

Oh, I guess I might as well talk about our Fun Run.  It was on May 5.  (I am telling you this for a good reason.)  Okay, the beginning of the  Fun Run was awful. Liz was ticked at me because I wanted to run and she wanted to walk.  So Curt was walking with us then.  Liz goes, “Fine. I’ll just go and walk with Sara.”

So she left and I was with Curt and Dylan.  So I was talking to them.  Wait!  Just let me backtrack for a second before I continue — okay the day before the Fun Run, May 4, I told Liz that I was just about to give up on Curt and that I liked someone else.  (He lives across the street from me.)  So appearantly she told him that I was “about to give up on him.”  Well, she told me she told him so she obviously did.  Shut up, Mindi, you are rambling.

Okay, so I felt kind of bad and was going to call him that night and tell him I wasn’t going to like him anymore and I was going to tell him why.  So I called and he wasn’t home.  (I am soooo lucky that he wasn’t.)  So I asked his mom to have him call me back and he never did.  So I was pretty mad about that.  The next morning–the day of the Fun Run — Curt had this thing on his hand.  He had cut himself and had to have 7 stitches.  That was why he hadn’t called me.  So we started talking just before the Fun Run started and that was fine.

Now I will go back to when I was talking to Curt and Dylan.  So Dylan left after awhile and it was just me and Curt.  Then, okay, I must collect my thoughts–we were walking over to the table which had the water on it and Curt said, “Can I ask you something?” So I said sure.  So he said, “Will you go out with me?”

I mean, Holy S***!  I was just about to give up on this guy and here he was – asking me out!  I stood there and I stuttered out some idiot question like are you serious or something like that, I don’t remember.  So finally I got my act together and I said, “yes.”

So now we are going out or going steady or going together or whatever you want to call it.  It is very weird.  It’s almost exactly how it was before except we stand closer and I guess we sort of talk more.  Sort of.  Also, I feel alot more self consious when I’m around him and stuff.  People keep asking me stuff like, “Are you happy?” Ya know.  That kind of crap.  And I guess I am.

My feelings for him are so deep and I am afraid to tell him how much I like him.  I don’t want to scare him off.  I wonder how he feels about me right now.

Mikey keeps asking if we’ve kissed or hugged or if he’s put his arm around me yet.  Hell, we haven’t even held hands yet.  That is perfectly fine with me.  Not to sound like a prude or anything, but I am glad he’s not trying to rush me.  We’ve only been going out for 3 days.

Today, I got to see Mikey’s bare ass.  Yes, folks, Mikey mooned me.  Not intentionally, though. He meant to moon Liz, but I accidentally saw. HA!  I’m not supposed to tell anyone.  Mikey said so.

Love,

Hey Carnation,

Today Liz is absent because, for once, she is really sick!  Shocking, I know.

I swear, Curt is getting really sick of me.  Maybe it’s just my imagination like Liz says, but I don’t know.

Yesterday, my aunt Tracy had her baby.  It was a girl.  Her name is Lauren Reilee.  I haven’t gotten to see her yet because the hospital won’t allow kids.

On April 30th, we will be moving to Lacey.  Of course, I’ll still go to the same school.  We will be going to the Olympia church from now on, I think.

P.S. I had to end there because I forgot to finish and it was from too long ago to even remember what had been going on.

Dear Carnation,

Well, I can’t exactly say that nothing has been going on here, but nothing that made me have to write.  My spring break was pretty boring.  I baby-sat and did some stuff with Mignonne.  Curt called, but I never got to talk to him because I wasn’t home.  Oh well.  It’s the thought that counts, right?

Right now, Colie is on my bed, cleaning herself. That’s gross if you think about it, how cats clean themselves with their tongues.  Yuck.

On Wednesday, we had teacher conferences. Oh my word. I don’t want to get into it, but my mom said some stuff to Mr. M about I am going to die of embarrassment.  (It was about Curt.)  For some odd reason, Mr. M told Curt something and I was mad him the whole day. Oh well.  It’s over and it’s not as dramatic as it seemed.

Love,

Dear Carnation,

Today Liz was absent. I knew that she would be. We had an Algebra retake test and a Biology test. That isn’t fair at all!  Now she get a whole extra week to study.  (Next week is spring break.)  I wish I would have faked sick so that I could get a week to study. DAMN that makes me mad.  Oh well.

Yesterday Curt sat with me on the steps and helped me study for this test.  It didn’t help much, but I thought it was really sweet of him anyways.  He is making me so mad.  He still hasn’t asked me to the banquet.  I don’t want to ask him.  That makes me uncomfortable just thinking about it. I miss him already.  Isn’t that discusting?

Today Tara was singing this nasty song she sort of made up — “All I wanna do is butt f*** you.”  She was singing that to me!  So I said, “Really?  Do you really want to do that, Tara?”

She said, “I couldn’t do that to you.”  Then poor Curt was walking down the hall and she said, “But Curt could!”

I told her that was nasty.  Curt, unfortunately, heard his name so he’s like, “What, what?”  He kept bugging me about it but I wouldn’t tell him what she said so he was irrated.  He kept saying “You are going to tell me.”

He walked me and my sister halfway to our car.  They hate each other.  He said he’s going to call me next week.  I hope he does, even though I’m out of town.  I wonder if he’s kept every letter that I’ve written him or if he just throws them away. He’s written me two.  I told you about one of them.  The other one just said, “Hi Mindi. -Curt”  It was exciting, but I kept it anyway.  All the letters that I’ve written him have been pretty long.  I think I’ll write to him during the trip.

Tara says that Evan has two people in mind to ask to the banquet.  she said she thinks one is me.  I hope Curt hurries up.  I think Evan might ask Tara. I kind of wish that he would.

I love you, the earth, my mom, my cats, Curt, and I can’t think of much else.

Good night.  C ya later.

Love,

Hello Carnation,

Today was quite an uneventful day. One thing that I do know for sure is that I will never ever talk to Liz about Curt again! She is getting very sick of it, I can tell.  She says that she wants us to get together and stuff, yet she says she’s jealous because if we do, we will have all our own secrets and I’ll always be with him blah, blah, I’ll ignore her and won’t want her around.

I always said it wasn’t true, that I’d never do that to her. The terrible thing is that it is already starting to happen.  Not all of it, but I just don’t feel comfortable letting her read notes we write.  (He’s still only written one.) I’m sure it hurts her feelings, but I just don’t know what to do.

I guess I should describe the events of the day. Well, Liz and I didn’t get our Water document done so we had to stay in there until we finished.  What I mean is we were in there from 12:00 ’til 1:00 doing one document.

Curt and Lacey were helping us, luckily.  I don’t think we would ever have finished if not for them.  I feel so stupid in that class.  Probably because I am when it comes to computers.

Curt had bad breath today. Just thought I’d tell ya! He breathed on me when we was helping with the computer and I was kind of glad. Just kidding!  But not about the fact that it was rank.

In english we are reading the Odyssey. It is quite interesting.  We get to learn about the cyclops, the gods and goddesses and – best of all – the Trojan War!  HA HA.  I love it.  Couldn’t you just die?!  My favorite god so far is Zeus.  He is the god of all the other gods and goddesses and I think that he’s pretty cool.

Today I took an Algebra test.  I don’t know how I did.  I hope not too bad.  I hate the junk we’ve been doing.  Friday I have a really big Biology test.  I am not looking forward to it at all!

Love,

Dear Carnation,

Today was a good day.  It was also St. Patrick’s day. I wore some groovy green corduroy pants that belong to my mom.

The worst part of today was computer class.  Me and Liz were supposed to put a Bible outline of Word Perfect. We ended up having to type it 3 times because we kept accidentally erasing it.

So far Liz and I have a file name snobby, pansy.RPT, Joke.Doc, Water.Doc, and Bible.TST.  That’s the only cool part of our class — having our own files.  We had to skip our lunch and our study hall to get Bible.TST typed up.  I was very mad.

The computers are all in the classroom where the 7th and 8th graders were having English. So we were in there during their incredibly boring class.  Tommorow we have to skip, most likely, lunch and study hall again to type up Water.Doc.  Just so happens, we erased that file too.

Today Curt wrote me a note. It went like this:  “Dear Mindi, How’s life? Nice of you to join our class today. Are you going to the banquet? Well I should start doing my english.  See ya next year or so.  Love Curt.”

Isn’t that nice?  I wrote him back.  My letter was about 3 times bigger.  I guess he doesn’t like to write forever like me.  I think that I’ll save his letter forever.  This is the very 1st note that he’s ever written me.  I’ve written him 4.  Tonight I just wrote another, but he hasn’t gotten it yet.

I hope he does ask me to the banquet.  I like him alot!  I really do!  The problem I have is that I can’t talk to anyone about it. Liz is sick of it and so is my sister.  I don’t feel comfortable talking to anyone else and for some reason my mom hates him.  Every time I bring up his name, she changes the subject.  I don’t know why.  And there is only so much I can discuss with Bill. I am the type of person who has to talk about my feelings or I else I end up having to write about it like I am now.  (No offense.)

Allison told me on that Sunday morning when we were both at Liz’s that some other girl from their church thinks I’m a snob.  That’s fine with me.  I think she’s an airhead bitch, so I guess we’re even.

I have a hole in the bottom of my foot.  I am dead serious! I’ve had it for about 6 months at least and I wish it would go away.

I have to go to bed, but first I gotta fill up this page.  I’ll talk about my mom hating Curt.  I really don’t know why she does. She is so weird.  She calls him “that little punk” and “that little twerp.” Gotta go!

Love,

To: Carnation

Hello.  Today was Monday. I spent Friday through Monday at Liz and Lacey’s house. It was pretty fun. I got meet their friend Allison.  She is very pretty and outgoing and fun. However, she is really mean when she doesn’t like someone.  I mean, really wicked. But, in all, I think she’s a sweet person.

I also got to see Sam. Wow! What a treat! (Can you tell I’m being sarcastic?)  Sam really isn’t too bad, but it is so repulsive to me that him and Tara are going out. It’s discusting!  Yuck, yuck, icky, icky.

This weekend, we rented Toy Soldiers. I’d already read part of the book so I knew alot about what was going to happen.

I could tell I was getting on Liz’s nerves the way I kept talking about Curt. Then, today, she went up to him and told him she hated him. He said, “I love you, too.”

She then said, (I cringe at the very thought!) “The reason I hate you is because all Mindi wanted to talk about this weekend was you!”

He said, “The whole weekend?”

She told him yes and he said, (not sarcastically), “This is great.  This it great.”

I am so embarrassed that she would ever say that. I broke two pencils in half. Well, one I broke, the other I chewed in half. I just don’t know what to do with Liz. It really embarrassed me.  I guess I should get used to it.  I think just about everyone I ever speak to must tell him what I say.  If we ever do get together, we will only have the whole school to think because otherwise I would never know he liked me and vice versa.

I gotta sleep now.

Love your little friend Mindi.  Here’s my autograph.  You are privelaged.

Dear Carnation,

Today was kindof a boring day. Curt didn’t ask me out.  He is slow or chicken or disinterested.

Man, I hate computer class.  It’s so confusing and if I do something wrong, the teacher comes over and taps my head. It hurts. I’m thinking of knocking him out the next time he tries that little trick.  He is such a jerk.

Biology wasn’t as much fun as it was yesterday. Samantha wasn’t at school, so Liz helped me.  She is kind of queasy about touching the frog, and I don’t blame her.  That’s how I was last year. I cut some organs out of Harry’s body that I wasn’t supposed to and I think Mr. M was kindof annoyed.

Liz told me that she told Curt that I think he has cute legs.  I was very embarrassed, but I guess I don’t mind that much.  Liz tells me everything they talk about.  (She says it’s usually me.)  Today she said that she told him I was giving up Christian Slater for him.  It’s true.  I’m not sure if I want her to tell him that kind of stuff.  Maybe I do.  I don’t know.  I’m too confusing of a person and I don’t know what I want.  Well, I do.

I better stop arguing with myself now.  So, moving on.  When she told him that, he said, “I feel special.”

Our “desk conversation” goes like this:

Him: Hello Mindi -Curt
Me: Hello.  I didn’t know you sat here
Him: II dodo
Me: Everyday?
Him: Yes
Me: It’s boring here isn’t it? I think it is.
Him: Sometimes
Me: I’m sorry
Him: Your forgiven, I think.
Me: That’s good. HA! You were supposed to say, “It’s not your fault, Mindi.”

That’s all.  Also I wrote:  Why is that all smeared? Have you been putting spit on my desk?

That’s it.  Our whole conversation. At least until tomorrow! It was so exciting I’m sure you are jumping out of your seat.  Aren’t  you?

Also, Curt told Liz that he wants to ask me out but he doesn’t know how.  Oh brother.  I hope Liz is telling the truth and not exaggerating or anything. I just like him so much. I’ll believe anything that anyone tells me about him. I’m just gullible, I guess.

I love him, but it’s kind of a BIG crush, so I guess I can call it love. Whatever. Who cares?  I really wish he would ask me to the banquet.  Why? Do you think I am just wanting a boyfriend, any boyfriend? I hope I’m not being like that. (The only reason it occured to me is because Gary told me that’s how he thinks I am. What a nerd!)

I love you. And Curt, now that I’ve established that.

Love,

Dearest Carnation,

Today was an okay day, but I did something really stupid and, if you think about it, it was really gross, too.  I’ll tell you about it later, okay?

First I’ll tell you about yesterday.  We were assigned our partners for dissecting. I am partners with Samantha.  We were also given our frogs. We named ours Harry.  So all that we accomplished yesterday was the opening of the mouth and the scraping of the skull.  Today, however, was awesome!  We totally skinned him.  We got to cut the muscles off his legs and then we go to open up his chest and look at all his internal organs. It was so cool.  I liked it very much.

Before class today, I did something that I don’t think we’re supposed to do.  I’m not sure.  But anyways, I was getting mine out of the refridgerator and Curt wanted to see it, so I took Harry out and showed him.  He thought Harry was really cool and said, “You should take out his eyes and put them in the freezer and then you can keep them forever.”

Since I had no use for them, during class, I scooped them out with my probe and after class, I went over to Curt, who was sitting on the steps, and said, “Here, Curt. I got the eyes for you.”

He said something like cool and then I left.  He liked them, I guess, because he put them in a little plastic bag and carried them around everywhere with them.

After I thought about it awhile, I realized how deranged it was for me to just walk up to him and hand him some eyes.  You gotta admit that was odd.

I love you!  I like Curt a lot!

Love,