15 February 2003 - 2:47 p.m.

For those of you who didn't know me when I was a little kid, here are three pieces of information you should know.

1. I was blonde. So, this isn't really necessary, but it's a kind of fun fact.

2. I was painfully shy.

3. I was scared of everything.

I used to call my mom at work right before lunch in first grade to tell my mom I had a stomach ache. I really genuinely DID feel sick, but it was because I was so terrified of the vast amount of people in the lunch room.

We have this video of me and my cousins at a zoo when I was maybe 4. There are two really funny Melissa-related parts in it. First, we are on this stupid little train going around the zoo. We're heading up towards this tunnel (a very short tunnel ... you can literally see the light on one side from the other) and all of a sudden my voice stops registering on the video. Then after we've passed through it, you hear a little tiny Melissa Voice say "gee, that wasn't nearly so scary as I thought it would be." Then, we're all at the petting zoo part. My cousins are all enjoying feeding the baby sheep and goats. Cue Melissa ... Crying and trying to get my mom to pick me up. I was so scared of these little tiny baby animals. I did NOT want anything to do with them.

If you know me NOW, this is fairly amazing ... because I show very few remnants of being scared and shy. I'm involved ... outgoing ... I moved hundreds of miles from my tiny little town to a huge city with more people in one dorm than in my entire home town ...

But now ... I think I'm reverting to scared, shy, low-self esteem Melissa. I've started to panic about stupid little things again. I'm convinced that all these things I'm applying for will figure me out and realize they do not want me to be a part of them. I'm scared to ask my favourite professor to write a recomendation for me because I'm convinced he'll say no. I'm finding myself more and more often walking on eggshells and caring what people think.

I feel like every time something good has happened lately it's been raising myself esteem ... and now I'm realizing how easy it would be for it to all crash down.

On a side note, there HAVE been a lot of really wonderful and marvelous and great things happening lately. I'm fairly consistantly loving Boston and the people here. I had a very very yummy dinner with Ali and her parents last night at the Cheesecake Factory ... and will be having brunch with them tomorrow. AND(!) my daddy will be here in 6 days, so I get to have parents here two weeks in a row. Having my daddy visit is great because (a) he is my daddy and one of my favourite people on the whole earth and (b) because he likes to go out to eat. So I get yummy food for 4 whole days. HOO-RAH!

On a second side note, I really wish I were British. My language quirks would be completely more acceptable in England than here.

On a third side note, I am completely procrastinating from doing any real work by babbling here ... I will try to write a more coherent/entertaining entry later. I'm sure after 5 hours of dealing with unavoidably stupid customers, I will have wonderful stories.

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