Jonah Day

Hello!  I've spent most of my computer time the past few days-- well, more like weeks-- uploading pictures.  Our Internet is really slow, so I can't do much else while the photos are loading.  Sorry I haven't been commenting back or anything!  I'll post some of those pictures tomorrow if they finish uploading.  And start commenting again.

For those of you who don't know what a Jonah day is, it's a day when things just don't go the way you planned. Kind of like Jonah, when he was planning on running in the other direction, and instead he ended up in the belly of a whale headed straight for Nineveh.

That's how today has gone. First I flunked my debate in English. It was totally my fault-- A, my partner, did a great job trying to hold our ground.  I, however, froze up and could not so much as nod my head yes or no, much less speak. I was not prepared because I thought we would be presenting tomorrow.  I have this huge fear of public speaking, and I have to have time to resign myself to what I'm doing right beforehand. If I don't, I look like this:



99.9% sure I looked like Anne
in this picture during our debate

I don't even know what happened during those ten minutes.  I just sat there... frozen.

Once I pried my fingers from the desk at the front of the room and stiffly walked back to my seat, something else happened.  A gargantuan brown spider was creeping its way up my backpack.  Its body was the size of a half-dollar, with spindly black legs curled up underneath it. I didn't notice at first, but the girls around me started murmuring and pointing.  The arachnophobes flinched away in fear with whimpers.  The rest marveled at the pure size of the monster.

I had to stand up and lean over J's desk to see it. (We'd done some flip-flopping of seats, and my backpack was in front of her desk.) I don't spaz out about bugs, but this thing was horrendous.  I quickly slid my shoe off and squashed it.  This turned out louder than I thought it would.  I got some harsh looks from Ms. Snickerdoodle for interrupting the other debate teams with a loud splat!

"Sorry," I mumbled.  "But the only thing worse than seeing a spider that size is losing the spider that size." And the thought that it had probably come out of my backpack... *shudders* I am never leaving my backpack open in the basement again.

Then I lost my flip-flop in the hallway.  Somebody stepped on it and it slid right off. The person then cussed me out and elbowed me in the ribs to push past. I gritted my teeth and went to go retrieve the shoe from under the herd of teenagers.

The last three periods of the day were spent in a computer lab.  It's the freshman week to take the big end-of-the-year test, and it's a new computerized version.  No one knows what they're doing. It's a complicated system to say the least.

So those were just a few things that happened today.  I've tried to cheer myself up with this Anne of Green Gables quote:

 

I'm going to try to learn from today's mistakes and not make them tomorrow.  Tomorrow I'll be prepared for all my work.  I'll wear boots that can't fall off when I'm walking.  And I'll empty my backpack and put it in the freezer tonight to kill all the spiders!