Sharon Creech - Absolutely Normal Chaos

That made me feel a lot better, but still—eight hours in a car with Carl Ray????

I do like to visit Aunt Radene, because they live on this great little farm with a cemetery in the front (they tell a lot of ghost stories) and a big hill in the back (with cows on it) and an enormous barn (with a loft full of hay) and the niftiest swimming hole in the world.

The bad part about visiting Aunt Radene is that not only is there no phone, but there also is no electricity and there is NO PLUMBING. That means outhouses and wells and stuff. Really.

But I don’t know how I can be away from Alex for a whole week.

Beth Ann called to say that she had talked to Christy, who said that the GGP is still considering her for membership, but that she would have to come to the next pajama party, which is next Saturday. And Beth Ann said that since Carl Ray and I would both be gone (she sounded real jealous when she heard I was going, but I told her that he was just my stupid cousin and I didn’t even want to go and it wasn’t going to be any fun and I would remind him of her every five minutes), she might as well go to the GGP pajama party. Just for the heck of it, she said.

I’m glad I’ll be gone.

My mother has forbidden me to use the following three words: “God,” “stupid,” and “stuff.” She said I needed to expand my vocabulary. It’s not easy eliminating those words all of a sudden. When she said that, I said, “Well, God !”

“Mary Lou!”

And then I said I had to go do the stupid dishes and she said, “Mary Lou!” and about two seconds later I said I was going to have trouble not saying God and stuff , and she said, “Mary Lou!” So I asked her what in the heck I was supposed to do with these big holes in my vocabulary all of a sudden, and she said, “Use the thesaurus.”

Right. So I spent about an hour combing the thesaurus, and here’s what I came up with:

God: deity, Lord, Jehovah, Providence, Heaven, the Divinity, the Supreme Being, the Almighty, the Omnipotent, the Infinite Being, Alpha and Omega, the Absolute, King of Kings, etc. (There’s lots more.)

(I’m having trouble picturing me saying, “Oh, deity!” or “Oh, Omnipotent!” or “Oh, Alpha and Omega!” but I’ll give it a try.)

Stupid: foolheaded, asinine, buffoonish, apish, fatuous, witless, moronic, imbecile, batty, besotted, myopic, poppycockish, cockamamie, lumpish, oafish, boobish, beefbrained, chowderheaded, beetleheaded, cabbageheaded, etc.

(There are lots of words for stupid. I can’t believe my mother wants me to use some of these, but I’ll try. I practiced already: That witless ole Carl Ray! That beefbrained Christy! That cabbageheaded Beth Ann! Pretty good, eh?)

Stuff: material, constituents, sum and substance, nub, pith, quintessence, elixir, irreducible content.

(Well, sure . I can hear myself now. We all messed around and quintessence. He had all this elixir in his pocket. We went to the park and irreducible content. It doesn’t make a bit of sense, if you ask me.)

Not much elixir happened today. Alex had to work all day, so I stayed home, watched Tommy, read some more Odyssey , and quintessence.

Mrs. Furtz came over again, all crying and nub, about some cabbageheaded letter she got. I don’t know what she was going on about. I do feel sorry for her and all, I really do, but Omnipotent! She realllllly gets to sobbing and pulling at her hair.

Alex and I are going out tomorrow night and Thursday night before our Separation. Oh, sob.

The only good thing about Carl Ray going out with Beth Ann is that after dinner he splashes on about a gallon of besotted aftershave and runs (well, drives) over to Beth Ann’s (she lives a whole block away), and he doesn’t get back until about ten or eleven o’clock. Dad is happy because he finally gets his TV-watching chair back, and everybody else is happy because they can watch their own programs again.

I have a confession to make. I snooped around in Carl Ray’s room today. I don’t know what got into me, but I was vacuuming upstairs and I was looking at all these new bottles of aftershave (he has two bottles of Canoe; he must have heard how much Beth Ann loves it) on his dresser, and his top drawer was open a bit and I sort of peered in and then I guess I was wondering if he had all his money in there and I wanted to see if he had any left, so I opened the drawer.

He sure had a lot of sum and substance in there. Alpha and Omega! About twenty packs of gum, a bunch of pennies and nickels, three can openers, two pocketknives, some horse chestnuts (???), three pairs of ratty old socks, pens, pencils, packs of matches, glue, a can of tuna fish (unopened), and a can of sardines (also unopened), a DIARY (!!!!), and something wrapped up in tissue paper.

I stared at the diary and the thing wrapped up in tissue paper for a few minutes. I didn’t want anyone to catch me, but I sure wanted to open that diary and that little package. But I was starting to feel guilty. I decided to open only one thing. I figured that it would be worse to open the diary, so I opened up the tissue paper.

How peculiar.

Inside was a gold ring with a large black stone. There was also a card that said: “Carl Ray, I want you to have this. I’ll explain later. C.F.” I figured it must be from his father (Carl Joe Finney), but I never knew that Uncle Carl Joe could afford anything as fancy as that ring. If he could, why wouldn’t he put a bathroom in his house?

I was going to look inside the ring to see if it had an inscription, but Dennis came upstairs then and he caught me sticking it back and asked what I was snooping at and I told him I was just cleaning, for Deity’s sake.

Book Eleven of the Odyssey is deadly boring. Ha. That’s a pun, because this part is all about Odysseus’s visit to the dead. It wasn’t as exciting as I expected it to be. He meets some old friends who weren’t as lucky as he (they’re dead, after all) and also he meets a prophet who tells him what’s going to happen to him in the future. He warns him about all the dangers ahead and tells him that he will kill all of his wife’s suitors. I didn’t think Homer should give away the ending like that. Also, this prophet tells Odysseus how he will die!!! He’s going to die at sea, but a sort of peaceful death.

Imagine. Would you want someone to tell you what was going to happen to you and how you were going to die? What if you were told you were going to die at sea? Wouldn’t you stay about as far away from the sea as possible? But the way this prophet tells Odysseus, it’s as if there isn’t a darn thing he can do about it. It’s all planned out. Would you want to know what was on your path of life and all? I wouldn’t. No way. But I wouldn’t mind visiting dead people. I’d check on how Mr. Furtz was doing.

I’ve just been with Alexxxxxx. Sigh. But I’ll wait and tell about him at the end.

First, Beth Ann. She called today and jabbered on for hours about that wonnnnderful Carl Ray. That cabbageheaded ole Carl Ray sent her a dozen red roses!!! I asked her if she was absolutely sure they were from him, and she seemed a little offended. She said that there was a card with the flowers and it said, “To Cleo from Tony.”

“Huh?” I said. “Cleo? Tony?”

She giggled. “Our nicknames. I’m Cleopatra, he’s Antony.”

Oh, Alpha and Omega! It took me about ten minutes to quit gagging. I could not imagine Carl Ray standing in some florist shop writing out this card that says, “To Cleo from Tony.” I mean, what would the storekeeper think ? King of Kings! Supreme Being! What happens to people?