you only have permission to touch my ankle for dragging purposes

Thursday, Jun. 21, 2007 | 7:44 AM

i'm at tara's house, and i cannot sleep. i started trying to sleep at about 4 am. i gave up around 5:30. like an idiot, i didn't bring my pills. the thing i was laying on was uncomfortable. tara and i were sharing it, and i didn't feel like i had enough room. i was close to the edge and the blankets kept falling off. light was shining in all bright through the windows. i tried to cover my face, but i can't sleep with a blanket over my head. it feels like it's hard to breathe or something.

so unless i actually start to feel like i can actually sleep, it looks like i'm staying up all night. that kinda sucks. what am i going to do until tara wakes up?

i guess i could write about what's happened so far.

let's see... well, i got here about 6 pm. pretty much the first thing we did was go to the barn. we took care of paloma and stuff, and then stopped at a pizza place. we waited for about ten minutes while they cooked our pizza. we sat in wooden chairs and discussed well groomed pizzas, bad pizza vibes, and tara's ability to talk to pizzas.

then we went to fred meyer and bought some otter pops, cream cheese and strawberries. random, i know.

we went back to her house, ate some pizza, and then ended up going outside for some reason. we sat on the swings, wondering what to do. i thought back to all the stuff we used to do in her backyard. she must have been doing the same, because she said, "we could make an obstacle course." for some reason, that's one of the things we used to do when we were younger. i guess we were imitating dog agility courses.

so we made an obstacle course. we walked along a bench, jumped over an old, dried up brown christmas tree, weaved through a line of buckets, climbed over the top of a table, and then under another table. i know, we're strange. we both went through it twice before we got tired.

we collapsed to the grass in our tiredness. we laid there, petting the cat, tommy, for a while. then we went inside, where we wondered what to do again. we decided to play with dominoes. we played the actual game, we set them up and knocked them over, and we made domino towers. all sorts of domino fun.

somehow we started talking about dogs, and tara was talking about a dog she knows that does all kinds of tricks. i told her about how i play "where is it" with my dogs, and that reminded her of playing hide and seek with her guide dog puppy, fulton. this gave me the idea for us to play hide and seek. i hadn't played that in years!

she hid first, and i found her under this folding bed thingy that she now sleeps on. then i hid behind the washing machine. next, i found her inside a closet. then i hid behind some sort of um... actually i have no idea what it is. it's uh, i don't know, a big thing.

it's a lot easier to play that game when you're little. you can fit into smaller places.

our game was interrupted by lucky frantically barking at the sliding glass door. i looked out, and saw a raccoon eating the cat food. i called tara out of her hiding spot, "there's a raccoon, tara, it's so cute!" we watched it eat for a while, and then tara let lucky out so he could chase it off and feel like he could protect his yard. poor little raccoon.

it was around 12 or so at this point, and we decided to go out and try the star spotting thing. what you do is look up at a star in the sky, and spin around 20 times. when you're done, someone shines a flashlight in your eyes, and you fall. it's SO hard to stay standing.

we each did it about three times. it was very much filled with many giggles. it's hard enough to keep from falling just while spinning around 20 times... and it's pretty entertaining to watch.

we again collapsed in the grass and laid there for a while, petting tommy again. tommy just loves being petted at every opportunity he can get.

after we went inside, we were again faced with the decision on what to do next. tara listed off her available board games, but none of them seemed appealing. we toyed with the idea of making our own game, and we thought about trying to make a game using dice and cards.

i messed around with some dice and some cards, while tara decided that she actually wanted to play yahtzee. i made up a game, while she went to get her yahtzee game. since she wasn't there, i played for both her and i. we tied the first time. then i did it again, and she won. without playing.

then i stopped being silly and we played yahtzee. while we played, i filled in some of the squares on my little score card thing, so that it resembled a checker board. when we were done playing, i was like, "wanna play a mini game of checkers?" so we played a mini game of checkers, using little dice and little shells as pieces. i so won.

then we spent some time just kinda throwing cards at each other and stuff, until we decided to play with magnets. they were those kind of magnets that are words, and you can make random sentences out of them. we each took turns adding a word, and made a crazy sentence. i don't remember what all it said, but i have a picture of it.

tara was getting tired, but said she would be able to keep herself awake if she started bringing stuff into her room. she hadn't yet put her stuff that she'd taken home from stanford into her room, because she wanted to clean it first, and she'd just got done cleaning. she didn't want me to be bored though, so i said, "make it interesting... name every item you bring into your room."

so she brought in a box named beatrice, and unloaded some sort of water heater thing named charles, along with a bunch of other random stuff. i think the most entertaining part was when i asked her, "what's that drawer's name?"

"plue."

we laughed. i was like, "plue?" we laughed some more, as i asked, "how do you spell it?"

"p-l-u-e."

yeah, we were tired.

eventually we decided to go into the room that we would be sleeping (or trying to sleep) in. i didn't feel like getting up, so i held out my foot and said, "drag me."

"if i touch your foot," she said, "you're going to flip out." (i am very ticklish.)

"touch my ankle." after a pause, i laughed and added, "that doesn't sound right."

our conversation got to a point where this great line was said, "you only have permission to touch my ankle for dragging purposes."

she did attempt to drag me by the ankle, but i found that that's kinda painful. she got me to the doorway before i was like, "you're stretching my ankle... like taffy." then i laid there in the doorway for a while, giggling, and holding my ankle. yeah, i'm strange.

we both walked to the sleeping room, and after making our bed, tara pretty much went to sleep. it was about 3:20 am. i got on her computer for a little bit, but not long, because it's so amazingly slow that i can't stand to do much with it.

i was hungry, so i ate some pizza and applesauce. then i got ready for bed. i tried to sleep, could not, and have now been typing ever since.

it's about 7:40 now. i guess i'll attempt to entertain myself somehow, until tara wakes up.

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