Why does this always happen? Just when I get a website up and running and looking good, I find somebody else's that just blows me away and makes mine look like scribbles. I was really proud of what I've done with prisms until this morning when I was looking around Ginko's site and I found a link to fem • mass. Wow. Most of these women have been working on the web since before I had a functioning computer and all of them have way better websites than I do.

Of course, I've been through this before and I'd resolved to let this be my own space, to not let myself be influenced by other people. After all, competition may be inducive to a lot of things but self-expression isn't one of them. I wanted this to be my own space where I wouldn't worry about how I compared to other people - but it's hard not to.

I'm still proud of my content, but layout fails me. First, I don't have the capability to do much with graphics. I can't afford Photoshop, so I'm currently using an image editor I downloaded for free. The most advanced thing it can do is blur images. Also I don't have a scanner or a digital camera or a driver's licence, so I can't even go on my own to Kinko's to scan things. And I just don't seem to have the flair for where to put things so they look good but still make sense.

Oh well. Today was Mother's Day and we made breakfast in bed for Mom, as always. The tray the coffee cake was on melted in the oven and there weren't enough strawberries to go around and Allison overslept and the roses got dropped on the way upstairs, which is about normal. Dad and Allison had to dash off to get her to choir rehearsal before church, so Mom and I actually got to have a nice bit of conversation before Dad came home. We were celebrating the fact that we didn't have any more Morris gigs this spring and none scheduled yet for fall, so we technically don't have to perform again until we've got a musician. And I'm going to learn to play penny whistle over the summer, so by fall we'll haveone.Then we started talking about Christmas school, which I may or may not be going to this winter. She's from Berea and she always went when she lived there. She's got me all psyched about it. Let's see...I want to take Danish Dance and Beginning English (I'm still not sure what all these things are, but they all sound so wonderful and I know I've seen people do them, I just can't match up the names with the dances.) And Longsword (ooh!) and Shape Note Singing and Beginning Storytelling and the Mummer's Play and Woodcarving and Northumbrian Hornpipe Clogging and British Traditional Singing and Fun and Easy Contras and Beginning Appalachian Clogging and Beginning Rapper. Of course,there are only five classes in a day, so I can hardly take all those, but I figure whatever the schedule is I'll have lots of things I want to take. It's all still an if, but if they don't let me go this year I'll probably go next year, and if not next year I'll be in college and won't have to go wherever they go . . .oh. I just took another look at the top of that page. Children under 17 must be accompanied by a parent/guardian.

Drat. I was really looking forward to this. I really wanted to go. I felt like Cinderella denied her ball - only Cinderella got to stay until midnight. The last year we were in Berea for New Year's we actually left at 11:30, just as they were saying, "Now let's go and dance in the new year!" Allison was tired and my parents didn't want to make her wait another half hour. It was awful.

God, I wish I were Owen Morrison. He's been at Christmas school for the last four or five years, he lives in Charlottesville, he's on Albemarle, he can charm the socks off of any girl within a half mile radius, and his father's a teacher at Christmas school so he's never had to worry about not getting in. His father's Jim Morrison, for crying out loud. Practically a god in the Morris world.

Well, it's later now and Mom said she'll ask if I can go without a parent. I'll only be six months from seventeen, anyway, and she says I'm lots more responsible than the average seventeen year old. I think it sounds like too much to hope for, but I've got my fingers crossed.

May 11
May 17