Meg Dowell Writes

It’s amazing that, after nearly seventeen years of living, I still haven’t mastered the art of room-cleanliness. A couple months ago, I came home to find a piece of paper taped to my door: “You have 30 hours to clean your space, or you lose your door. Love, Mom.” This time, I promise you, it wasn’t that bad. There were just a few baskets of folded laundry lying around…some stacks of papers on the floor….half of my bookshelf stacked in the corner…..okay fine! So it was a disaster with furniture. But now it looks like this:

Anyway, something good came out of cleaning my room last night. Surprising–I know! But sometimes things happen for a reason. I guess God wanted me to clean my room last night. As I was picking up a bunch of scattered school papers, I found a small folded piece of notebook paper. It turns out that, in my state of anxiety in the hours before my choir audition, I wrote this:

The Secret Diary of a Panicking Teenager

Really? REALLY?! You really expect me to do this? I don’t think so. Sorry.

Less than two hours until you are Rugenated.

It’s going to go by fast, I know it….

113 minutes and counting….

I wish Rugen would show some sort of emotion during these things. I can’t take the silence!

What if I have to pee during my audition?

What if I forget my name when I’m filling out my auditon card? What if I accidentally write “Lorelai Gilmore”?!

T-minus 106 minutes and counting!

My boots are dirty. Its a good thing I have other blister-breeding foot warmers.

My other shoes hurt my toes, though! *strange wimpering sound*

These are the final words of a nervous wreck.

My ankle itches.

103 minutes till D-Day.

Did you know Viking Choir auditions are harder than most college choir auditions? Rugen….?!?!

Oh no. I almost have to pee. Crap.

100 more minutes!!! 110 minutes till I can relax.

Pink is a lucky color…pink is a lucky color….

I need some magic pants.

Pants!! GIVE ME A MIRACLE!

96 minutes. Kill me now.

Do re mi fa…squeak! *frowny face*

Oh man! What if I don’t hit the G? Aw….!

My cat was right–I’ll never make it!

92 minutes till the songbird croaks.

Suddenly I am frozen with fear. Brrrr.

What if I sneeze during the song? Sae-choo000!

I’m going to forget the words. There are 3.

88 minutes until Rugen screams for me.

What if I forget the words to “My Country Tis of Thee”?

SWEET LAND OF CHO-CO-LATE!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That’s my life in a nutshell.

If you don’t sing in my choir, you probably don’t get a lot of inside jokes stuffed in here. What’s hard to believe is, I didn’t edit this at all. This is straight from my nervous brain on April 6th. I guess being nervous is okay and natural, though. I somehow ended up on the list.

The thing about auditions is, you have to know when it’s okay to be in freak-out mode and when it’s time to take things seriously. I stayed in freak-out mode all the way until I walked in the door and smiled my jaw off. And then, when it was over, I did some more freak-out-ing. But that’s normal. Sometimes, your best writing can come from the moments in which you want to stick your head in a bucket of chocolate pudding.

That would actually be really terrifying.

I’m almost through the third disk of Gilmore Girls: Season 3. There are six of them. I started watching on Thursday. I’m sure you could guess that my addiction is not going to subside any time soon. I waited months and months for this DVD. Do you really think I’m going to leave it in a corner and ignore it for the rest of the school year? The more I watch now, the less time I’ll spend during finals week procrastinating. By watching the Gilmores, I mean.

That probably means I’ll be procrastinating by reading Pendragon this semester. Yay!