Dear Diary,

It is the end of the year. I will try to be brief in sharing my development over these three-hundred, sixty-five days.

I have earned double last year's income, both with the frequency of new clients and with the raise in rates.
I have graduated a two-year student.
I considered buying a historic hall, a former church, or a beautiful earth-friendly building.
I considered buying a house in Steamboat Springs.
I officially became a school.

I have found some time for the homeschooling community, and am not sure where this segment of my life will take me; I so prefer solitude.
I have taken on the education of a high school student on the fast track to becoming a pop star in a foreign country.
I have spent more money this year than any other on education.

I have made a friend of a family that gets along with mine.

I have spent three separate months attempting to write in an organized fashion.
I have written very little overall.

I have become a refuge and rescuer to people who need deeper than fair-weather friends.
I have been a home, a ride, a source of income, a shoulder to cry on and manual labor.

I have gained four dogs and lost three.

I have been to court twice, once for myself and once for a friend, one for each of the above two causes.

I have lost my grandfather to suicide--a controlling man of ailing health, he was also in control of his death.
I have retouched with my grandfather's family, and discovered he is not my blood relative.
I have paid off debts due to his generous bequeathal.
I am grateful, and I miss him.

I tread the ground I grew up upon for the first time in many many years.
I touched the trees, breathed the air, tasted the water, smelled the rain.
I let my sisters play with my hair because it made them happy to doll me up so.

I have played no music whatsoever.
I barely touched a wind instrument, fingered a keyboard, hummed a tune of my own devices.

I constructed a shed and deconstructed a fence.

I have made gifts, a schedule, and progress.

I look to the coming calendar year.

I see the second wedding anniversary, eight years after the original.
I'm thinking, New Orleans.

I see a library for home school curriculum.

I see more times my friends may need me, and hope there are no or few times I may need them.

I see my sister deployed to active duty, hopefully stateside, potentially in Europe, possibly in Afghanistan.

I see a house with fewer things, and more of the things we need.
I see new floors, a remodeled kitchen, and a proper artspace for the artist.

I see a repaired and properly tuned piano.

I am hoping to see visits from far away family and friends.

I hope to see another 365 days, plus one.
Happy New Year to all

Dear Diary,

Trying to get a teenager to do her Year in Review of 2011 based on mass media is like, well, I'm so frustrated. I don't even have words. Just do the freaking assignment. How hard can it be?

So I decided to write on the things that I remember from my Freshman Year, using these Year in Review lists.

(1) http://adage.com/article/news/1995-year-review-o-j-overshadows-mergers/84069/

(2) http://www.warr.org/yir1995.html

(3) http://davesmoviesite.blogspot.com/2010/06/year-in-review-1995.html

(4) http://pop-culture.us/Annual/1995.html

Things that I cared about:
(1) The internet, tobacco, and OJ Simpson.
(2) Oasis, Alanis Morrisette, and Mariah Carey
(3) Braveheart
(4) OKC bombing, Dolly the cloned sheep,

The internet:
Did you see the card catalog they put in the high school? It's a COMPUTER! Soon it will be attached to all the other libraries. Creepy, huh?

Tobacco:
We can't watch Cigarette ads on TV anymore. There aren't any more. So, all those lessons about how to not be influenced by tobacco ads--OUTDATED! We can skip that chapter in class.

OJ Simpson
Could you ever have a sports hero ever again?

Oasis.
Will my sister turn that OFF already? (We shared a room. I hated oasis!)

Alanis Morrisette.
Seriously, my mom can't like pop music. That's not right. But, she bought this album, and I've always loved it.

Mariah Carey
I love I found a soul singer I can sing along with. My sister got this on tape.

Braveheart.
I hate Mel Gibson. I hate that my last name is Wallace and everyone says, "Are you related to William Wallace, the guy from the movie?" However, it's really fun to make fun of.

Oklahoma City Bombing
OH MY GOD that was not good. Everyone was in shock. NO one could stop talking about it. I don't even watch Television and I can draw pictures from memory of the stuff they showed all over the media.

Dolly.
If they could clone a sheep, is anyone safe? Can we save our DNA and maybe live forever? Will my friends and I ever stop talking about dinosaurs? EVER?!?! Didn't we all see Jurassic Park? ISN'T THIS BAD?!

Dear Diary,

I love shopping on Christmas Eve because people are so extraordinarily friendly.

Everywhere I went there were free cookies and/or complimentary coffee. Sometimes homemade cookies.

There were bell ringers dancing.

The tip jar was stuffed full, by 10 AM.

The roads were nearly empty.

Main Street was full, but everyone was grinning.

They had free limo rides as well as free horse and carriage rides.

You could see other people in their cars singing Christmas songs along with the radio. (Pa rum pa pum pum is quite recognizable.)

Everyone says Hi when you walk in, and Thank You when you leave, and even the customers call out Merry Christmas before the door closes behind you.

Sometimes, on a normal day, I wish I could make one day--just one--that everyone could be in a good mood.

Seems like someone beat me to it.

Dear Diary,

My friends say, it's remarkable how little drama I have in my life. But my local post office hates me and goes out of their way to make me miserable. Why? My dog bit the postman five months ago. I've been to court. I've paid everything. I've agreed to get a PO box for a year because they refuse to deliver to my house. I don't have the dog anymore.

I'm heartbroken for losing the dog I tried so hard to rescue (another story for another day). My sentence for owning a dangerous dog has been deferred for 1 year, should there be no additional incident, so I get all panicked when I don't see my dog in the back yard. If the county picks up my little dog the escape artist, I could go to jail for a year and pay upwards of $2000 in additional fines. This feeling is recurrent. Further, my son is extremely sensitive about having the dog taken away from us. Occasionally he comes in and climbs into my lap and cries, spontaneously.

The Post Office tells me they'll hold my mail. When I go in, they've sent it back. I fill out another hold order, and they lift it after I pick up my mail twice even though I told them not to, and they send my mail back again. I open a PO box and fill out the forwarding information, but the system is slow and a weeks worth of mail gets returned--again. The people are rude. They tell me I deserve it because of what my dog did. They tell me I'm a bad guy.

I would love to stop using the Post Office. As a personal protest, not as a political statement. I think they're a valuable part of the United States infrastructure, vital, in fact. So I feel terrible when I find myself glad they're having problems and a sketchy future.

I don't have constant drama, but if I were a TV show, you'd have to explain the backstory to an episode to someone who hasn't been following all season.

Every time I have to go get the mail, every time I have to mail something, every time I see my mailbox, I have to breathe deeply to keep from crying. Seriously. They took away, locked up in a punishing cell, and killed my dog for this. Why should the Post Office continue to retaliate? Will it end after a year? Will it end only when I move? Should I be finding myself considering buying a new home and moving to escape the treatment of the Postal Workers?

How much is fair?

Dear Diary,

The month of noveling has ended.

I have this love-hate relationship with words--I could put together everything I've ever written about the ability or inability to write.

I know every detail of the English language. But I don't mind if you break the rules, make up a new word, jumble your grammar a bit.

I write because when I speak no one listens, and when I write, no one listens either but at least I can go back and read it and revel in what I have the ability to say. If I speak it aloud, it's gone. Though, then I think of my dad and his musing that sound waves are energy and cannot disappear, but get infinitely weaker, so if we had the technology we could listen to Abe Lincoln as he spoke at Gettysburg. Or me, in high school, reciting these words spoken at Gettysburg.

I made a friend who claimed me as an Author. I decided to accept the post but I really can't let you know anything I've authored, truly.

I am connecting--possibly, finally--to a person I have always admired but has left me with the perpetual insult that maybe wasn't supposed to be at the time, when she looked at my business card and said, "so you're proficient at everything?" and I had to answer yes, as if I thought it were true, but to answer no would not be true, and now I have to carry that with me infinitely. For her, I must be proficient at everything, and she rarely gives me the time of day.

I am proficient at everything but fiction--I reached a mere half my writing goal for this month.

I don't like when people are recorded sounding like they are not well-spoken. I don't like people who are not well-spoken. I don't like when I read poorly written communications, and I don't like it when people know I don't like what they've tried to write. Seriously, if you can't handle the idea that you could always be better, how can you ever improve? Do you like stasis?

Stasis. That's where I am--I am a writer who writes the same things now that I've been writing for years and years.

Like Shakespeare or the guy who wrote the stuff attributed to Shakespeare, whichever ends up being true, I want to have measurable growth over the course of my career as a writer, but I don't trust that that will happen, so I expect that will never truly have a career as a writer.

I don't like musicians who are bad at what they do. I don't like politicians that are easy to make fun of. I don't like when people decide labels for me, because they are inevitably wrong. I can always prove a label wrong.

I don't like when people say they can't write, but often I can't write so it's a hell of a struggle.

I dislike more when people don't even try.