It all started on a Friday in August.

8:06 AM- I am unceremoniously woken by my younger sister banging on my door. I throw a pillow at it, hoping without conviction that the bag-o-bird will somehow silence her fists. I am wrong, as per usual.

8:15- My pink plaster walls shake with the sounds of the washer and dryer, and I am up. Fully and completely up. I stare at the mockingly bright color of my walls, and it dawns on me that I never liked pink, thus making me wonder why my room was full of it.

8:16- I resolve to ask my mom if I can re-paint my room.

8:20- My request is shot down as Mom sets a plate of smiley face breakfast food in front of me. Way to go, Captain Guilt.

8:30- I depart for my cave, thinking that maybe it magically changed its walls by itself.

8:31- I am disappointed. Pepto Bismol it is.

11:17- After hours of deliberating with myself and tossing a raquetball up and down on my bed, I decide something, and instantly am distracted by a song on my iPod.

11:18- I dance.

11:20- I remember what I decided, and what Mom said this morning.

11:33- I paint my room anyway.

Thus, the infamous Junior Year of Tina Rex begins.

Ok, so it's not as infamous as many in my school might believe, myself included, but I figured it should be documented. You know, for "future generations" and what have you.

After a general vocal beat-down from Mom, I was banished to my room for the night (this was also after the paint fumes had gone away). Being the second to last Friday of the summer, I was sincerely bummed, but concluded that I probably deserved it. I also concluded that it wasn't as bad as you might think- all thanks to my newly blue canvases. I took out my paint set and brushes and set to work on a mural. I picked my biggest wall for the main picture, and started drawing. Right in the center, I drew a large octopus with two comical eyes, closed in concentration. His tentacles spanned out from his central shape all the way to the wall opposite, where they met each other holding on to a boat. I drew a small, flame-haired person standing on this boat, waving a sign that had my favorite lyrics on it: "This boat may be small, and I may be big, but it's still man overboard, and I think I need your help." This took me all the way into the single digits of early morning, and I had only accomplished the penciled outline. Tomorrow I would paint it.

Tomorrow would be a productive day.

Tomorrow would be the last day of the life I used to know.