More from the annals of Courtney…personally, I’m looking forward to this particular year (1991) coming to an end…
July 30, 1991 –
…Our lovely Michigan has been going through a climate change – things are warmer and dryer than I remember. I hope we get snow this winter but dad says it’s NOT LIKELY.
This hasn’t been a good summer for Alpena.
1. Katie died of leukemia
2. There was a murder-suicide on my street
3. 3 people died in a boating accident
4. A boy hung himself from the pulleys backstage at the theater *
Isn’t it all awful? Plus there is this guy Jeffrey Dahlmer in Milwaukee who supposedly has murdered thirteen poeple, kept their body parts in his apartment and is wanted for more. Plus, he’s a cannibal!
Oh, well. I’m in a good mood! **
July 31, 1997
My To Do List:
Call David ***
Shop
Chores
Write two poems****
Tie up loose ends *****
* My parents swear nobody killed themselves backstage behind any of the three theaters in Alpena, ever, but I can’t imagine lying in my journal. So I don’t know what this is all about.
** Obviously, my ability to rise above such a tragic summer took great effort – certainly I was a different girl then, because now a simple report on the disappearance of the honey bees can send me into a “the world is ending” funk for weeks.
*** I have no clue who David is –
**** I miss how writing used to be another thing on my “to do” list – like something to be fit in between shopping and chores. It’s certainly a lot more heart-wrenching now!
***** What loose ends could I possibly have had to tie up?
In my next entry, my dad decided to remodel my room. Apparently he stripped my window pains, built my bookcases and repainted. All I do is complain about how “Mr. Handyman” decided my books needed a place to go, and how unfair it is that he was remodeling my room. I would give anything for him, now, to come build me built in bookcases!
The Public, the Private and Everything In Between 
Teenage Courtney was so dramatic. Or is it melo-dramatic? :-)I heard that someone hung themselves on the pulleys on the set of the Wizard of Oz. Maybe you heard that urban legend and got it confused with reality.
I am cracking up that you wrote that snow… in Alpena… any winter was ‘NOT LIKELY.’ So maybe you accelerated the effect of global warming just a little. All good writers exaggerate a bit.
I love it. Especially “but I’m in a good mood.” Sounds like me as a teen.
This reminds me of Emily’s post on memory — I’m sure I’d be bewildered at some of what I wrote long ago and not know who or what I was writing about.
I love the 14-year-old you! This entry is great, and so deep.
We’re on the same wavelength again. Stay tuned for the post based on entries in my diary from eighth grade (recently discovered in the attic along with other stuff). Meanwhile, I just love that “tie up loose ends” on your “to-do” list. That would be a never-ending task for someone like me. And I’m with you on wishing I had a “Mr. Handyman” to come build me some built-ins.
Katie, I prefer to think of myself as prescient, rather than dramatic :-). My dad was obsessed with global warming…
Andi – I miss being able to compartamentalize like that…
Dorothy – this whole David person is very interesting to me…he’s in my journal a few times and I keep wondering who he could be…
Nova – thank you!
Emily – I. CAN’T. WAIT. The funnier part of that whole summer is apparently my dad was building a deck and it was just a mess – and so he kept distracting himself with projects around the house to avoid it…
Oh that was fun!
Time to dust the old diries for me too.
PS: I think you meant ‘the annals’.
And I meant diaries.