I SAW IT AGAIN!!!!!

Titanic, second time. Jen drove me and Katie in her car (the brown Tempo that used to be Grandma's, it smells like cough drops) and she said she was only going because there was nothing else to do and she was NOT going to cry.

Guess who cried.

I'm not going to say who. (It was Jen.) (It was also me and Katie but we KNEW we were going to, so it doesn't count.) At the part near the end in the freezing water Jen made this little noise like a hiccup and then she grabbed my hand in the dark and held on until the lights came up. Then she let go really fast and said if we told anybody she would put our retainers down the garbage disposal. So I'm not telling anybody. I'm just telling the internet.

It was the nicest she's been to me since about 1994.

Christmas was good. I got the Spice World CD and a purple sweater from Grandma, and purple is my favorite color, which she knew. Dad got Mom a vacuum. Mom said "Oh! A vacuum!" in a voice.

TWO MORE DAYS OF 1997!!!

OH MY GOSH.

Katie and I saw TITANIC on Friday night, the very FIRST night it came out!!! Katie's mom dropped us off and went Christmas shopping, because it is THREE HOURS AND FOURTEEN MINUTES LONG. Katie timed it on her watch.

I can't even describe it. I'm going to try. The ship is SO big and the dresses are SO pretty and then Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio!!!!!) wins his ticket playing cards right at the beginning and runs onto the ship at the last second, and I knew right away he was going to be the best person in the whole movie and I WAS RIGHT.

I won't tell the ending in case you haven't seen it. (It sinks. That's not a spoiler, that's HISTORY.)

We cried from the part with the old couple in the bed until the end. Like an HOUR of crying. My eyes were so puffy Katie's mom thought something bad happened to us.

I have decided: I'm going to be a writer AND I'm going to write a book that makes people cry like that. On purpose.

We're going again. We HAVE to.

IT'S ON THE INTERNET!!!!!!!!

Welcome to my page!!! If you are reading this you are on the actual World Wide Web looking at CAITLIN'S CORNER OF THE UNIVERSE, and I made it BY MYSELF with a book from the library and Notepad. I had to upload it with the File Manager about nine times because I kept forgetting to upload the pictures, so the hearts were little broken boxes. Now they're hearts. :)

Here is how it works. I've been keeping a diary in a notebook since September. (It's purple with a unicorn on it. Don't laugh, it was on sale.) I typed all the old entries in, so the ones below this one are from the notebook. From now on I'm going to write them right here.

The computer is in the den and I can use it after 8 if nobody needs the phone, because when I'm on AOL the line is busy and Jen goes CRAZY because her friends can't call. Tonight she yelled "ARE YOU ON THE INTERNET AGAIN" from the kitchen and I yelled "YES, I'M MAKING HISTORY" and she said a word I'm not allowed to type.

If you like my page please e-mail me!!! I want to know who's out there!!! Is anybody out there? Hello?

(Katie, I know you're out there. You're sitting right next to me.)

I MADE A TABLE!!!

You don't know how hard this is. You have to put <TABLE> and then <TR> and then <TD>, and if you forget ONE of the closing ones the whole thing disappears and you get a blank white screen and you want to throw the computer out the window. (I didn't. Dad would kill me.)

My table is the ALL ABOUT ME box up at the top. It has a BORDER and everything. I showed Dad and he looked at it for a long time and said, "Huh. How'd you do that?" So I explained the whole thing and he listened to ALL of it. Then he said "Huh" again and went back out to the garage. From Dad that is basically a standing ovation.

Mom says I'm going to be a computer programmer. I said NO, I'm going to be a WRITER, I just need somewhere to put it.

I got a book about HTML from the library. It's as thick as the phone book and has a picture of a man on the front who looks like he has never been outside. HTML is how you make web pages. You type these little codes in brackets and they tell the computer what to do. <B> makes it bold. <I> makes it slanty. <CENTER> centers it. I have learned 11 codes so far. My goal is a real web page by Thanksgiving.

Katie said "why would anybody read it" and I said "why would anybody read YOUR diary" and she said she doesn't HAVE one and I said "EXACTLY."

Tomorrow is HALLOWEEN. Katie and me are going as Spice Girls. She's Baby (pigtails and a pink dress) and I'm Sporty (gym sweatpants and a high ponytail, and I'm going to do a cartwheel at every house). We have to wear our winter coats over our costumes because this is Minnesota, so basically we are going as two girls in winter coats. Like every year.

Jen and Mom and Dad had a HUGE fight tonight. Jen's curfew is 11:30 on weekends and she came home at 12:40. I know because I was awake. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table in her robe waiting, which is the scariest thing Mom does.

Then the yelling. Jen: "I'm SEVENTEEN." Mom: "Then act like it." Jen: "Everybody else gets to stay out till one!" Mom: "I'm not everybody else's mother." Etc. etc. for like 20 minutes.

Dad didn't say anything the whole time. Then at the very end he said one sentence really quietly, "Jennifer, we didn't know where you were," and that's when Jen started crying and ran upstairs and slammed her door so hard my Hanson poster fell off the wall.

I put my headphones on and listened to MMMBop four times.

I am NEVER going to be like that when I'm seventeen. Katie says I will. Katie says everybody is.

LATER: Jen just came in my room and sat on the end of my bed in the dark and didn't say anything for a long time. Then she said "Sorry about your poster" and left. I don't know what that was.

FIRST HOME FOOTBALL GAME!!! I MARCHED!!!

OK, here is what marching band is like, for anybody who doesn't know. You wear a wool uniform that was probably made in 1970 and a tall hat with a feather on it (it's called a plume) and you have to keep your clarinet up and your knees high and count in your head the whole time and NOT step on the person in front of you. I stepped on the person in front of me once. It was Katie. She said it was fine. (She plays flute.)

It was SO cold my fingers didn't work by the end. At halftime we did the show and I could see Mom and Dad in the bleachers. Mom was waving with both arms like she was landing an airplane. Dad was just sitting there. But he came. Dad never comes to football.

We lost the game but who cares, the band was great.

Also Katie's Tamagotchi died in Algebra on Tuesday. She's still upset. I told her it had a good life. (Four days.)

Mom woke me up at quarter to four this morning. At first I thought something was wrong. She said, "Do you want to watch the funeral with me?" and I said yes even though I was mostly asleep.

We sat on the couch under the afghan and she made tea for both of us, even me, with a lot of milk. The TV was the only light in the house. It was already the middle of the day in London. There were SO many people, and so many flowers outside the palace it looked like an ocean made of flowers.

The worst part was the boys. Prince William and Prince Harry walked behind the coffin with their dad and their grandpa and their uncle, and Harry is only 12, which is two years younger than ME. On top of the coffin there were white flowers with a little card that said "Mummy." That's what they say in England for Mom. When the camera showed it Mom put her hand over her mouth.

The part in the church started at five o'clock our time. Elton John sang "Candle in the Wind" with new words, and Mom cried, and I cried, and neither of us said anything about it.

Dad came down around 6:30 and saw us and didn't ask. He just made pancakes. When he brought Mom her plate he put his hand on her shoulder for a second.

Mother Teresa died yesterday too. It's been a very sad week for the world.

FIRST DAY OF HIGH SCHOOL. Survived. Barely.

Things I learned today:
1. The building is HUGE. I went to the wrong end of the science wing twice.
2. My locker is on the bottom row, and the combination is hard to do when people are standing on you.
3. Seniors are basically adults. Some of them have BEARDS. (The boys.)
4. Katie is in my Algebra and my English AND band, so that's 3 out of 7 and I will live.
5. Jen is a senior. We have an agreement that she won't talk to me in the hallway and I won't talk to her. She saw me by the gym and did a little wave with ONE FINGER. I'm counting it.
6. Band is the best. The band room smells like valve oil and old carpet and I LOVE it.

Everybody was talking about Princess Diana at lunch. Some girls were crying. I didn't, but I wanted to.

Dear Diary. No. That sounds dumb.

Hi. My name is Caitlin and I'm 14 and tomorrow I start HIGH SCHOOL. Mom got me this notebook at the drugstore for "your thoughts," because she says I have too many of them and they need to go somewhere besides the dinner table.

Facts about me: I live in Minnesota, in the suburbs. I play clarinet. My best friend is Katie. My sister Jen is 17 and a senior and thinks I'm a baby. My mom cleans teeth for a job, so I have never had a cavity. It's not allowed. My dad runs a lumberyard and doesn't talk much, but he makes really good pancakes.

Something terrible happened this weekend. Princess Diana died in a car accident in Paris. Mom turned on the TV Sunday morning and just sat down on the floor. I didn't know you could be that sad about somebody you never met. Mom said it's because she was a mom.

I'm going to write in here every day. (Probably not every day.)