Something is off-key. Like when you hear somebody singing the Bee Gees and you know the notes sound perfect to them... but they're audibly so.. flat, sharp, or just plain awful. Is it me? Is it my way of thinking? I don't know, honestly. This I do know: I did not choose a friend wisely. The ones I trust and feel close to I can count on one hand. I slept through my alarm clock buzzing and arrived at school 7:57. I hugged Susanne goodbye, the poor babye is homesick. Our moods follow an ESP twin pattern. Whenver I am dour, she is dour, and so on. Ashlea cheered me up with her amazing antics and delicious chocolate Smarties from Canada, my first French culture encounter of the day (le Smarties). Nestle Co. owns them, so everything was in both English and French. Reason number 1 of 500 to move to Canada? Then... voila, another upswing (#2) Achini pulled me aside on the way to English, asking me to sing aloud La Marseillaise, the French national anthem. I sang it opera style; she was impressed. Mrs. Hellams heard me and invited me to teach the words to her class when Thanksgiving break ends. I'll do it, complete with patriotic fervor and a beret? Oh, but of course! Hon,hon. Uphill all the way until 6:30 pm. I met Casey for dinner. He came to pick up Suus and I around 6:45. No hug, no high-five, no "VA!"- nothing. A direct blow to the height of friendship I had envisioned between us. Another slip. He wants to talk politics. Fair enough. Let's be realpolitiks and avoid common conversational topics; what is 3 months of not seeing each other versus the difference between preemptive and preventitive action, Mr. Textbook Parrot? I kept thinking to myself, he cares, he cares, he cares, he wants to hear about your college goals, he is your friend. So much has changed in a relatively short period. The summer went into a vacuum, a tiny dust particle of better times zapped into an oblivion of grey dust swirling around and around only to setttle or will it? Chin up, I know. Avoiding him, as immature as it seems, will help me get over this rut of insane mentality that somehow he is better than me and that I need his friendship. I have never severed ties with anybody so deliberately but this is really too much drama to handle. That sounds overly emphatic... I feel liberated by the whole disappointment stage. I learned a lesson about how to choose friends... the Casey experience is a good litmus test for what can go wrong in a relationship. 1. Establish what you are- knowing you like somebody and then finding out they would rather be "good friends" or "friends with benefits" is a hairy situation and oftentimes results in distance 2. Broken promises however picayune or significant are big and matter. Not sending a postcard when you said you would, not writing for three months. Naughty, naughty. Get a piece of paper and pencil.. it's that easy. 3. Agree on friendship. Be friendly, not aloof and superior. Give and take... practice human kindness rather than priding yourself on making other people feel worthless. Time to aim for perfection, I'm going to make a pumpkin pie. Convert my melllll-aaaaahn-coly to yummy joy.