The Journal of Anxious Izzy Parker, page 1
Contents
Cover
Title page
Copyright
Daily Journal
What I Did This Summer
What Animal Would I Be?
My Favorite Place
Visiting Meemaw
Missing Reading Group
Being Lionlike
Four Square
On the Weekend
Two-Day Journal
Beach Encounters
Snobby?
Just Dianna
Maybe a Friend
Letter to Jane
Jane’s Answer
Show-and-Tell
A Not-Good Feeling
Dianna’s Visit
Nervous About Gandalf
Gandalf
Thanksgiving with Meemaw
Show-and-Tell Surprise
Trinity’s Party
Not Avoiding Trinity
Choices
My Shop
Crafting with Four
Halloween
About the Author
List of Pages
Page iii.
Page ii.
Page 1.
Page 2.
Page 3.
Page 4.
Page 5.
Page 6.
Page 7.
Page 8.
Page 9.
Page 10.
Page 11.
Page 12.
Page 13.
Page 14.
Page 15.
Page 16.
Page 17.
Page 18.
Page 19.
Page 20.
Page 21.
Page 22.
Page 23.
Page 25.
Page 24.
Page 26.
Page 28.
Page 27.
Page 29.
Page 30.
Page 31.
Page 32.
Page 33.
Page 34.
Page 35.
Page 36.
Page 37.
Page 38.
Page 39.
Page 40.
Page 41.
Page 42.
Page 43.
Page 44.
Page 45.
Page 46.
Page 47.
Page 48.
Page 49.
Page 50.
Page 51.
Page 52.
Page 53.
Page 54.
Page 55.
Page 56.
Page 57.
Page 58.
Page 59.
Page 60.
Page 61.
Page 62.
Page 63.
Page 64.
Page 65.
Page 66.
Page 67.
Page 68.
Page 69.
Page 70.
Page 71.
Page 72.
Page 73.
Page 74.
Page 75.
Page 76.
Page 77.
Page 78.
Page 79.
Page 81.
Landmarks
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Start of Content
About the Author
Second Story Press
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The journal of anxious Izzy Parker / Alma Fullerton.
Names: Fullerton, Alma, author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220464537 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220464731 | ISBN 9781772603163 (softcover) | ISBN 9781772603170 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8611.U45 J68 2023 | DDC jC813/.6—dc23
Copyright © 2023 by Alma Fullerton
Cover and illustrations by Beena Mistry
Edited by Kathryn White
Designed by Laura Atherton
Printed and bound in Canada
Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.
Published by
Second Story Press
20 Maud Street, Suite 401
Toronto, ON
M5V 2M5
www.secondstorypress.ca
Daily Journal
You do not know me because I am new to this school. My name is Isabel Parker, but call me Izzy. I am eight years old and in Grade 3.
I will be totally honest. I hoped I would get to leave this journal writing stuff behind at my old school. But daily journals must follow a kid no matter what grade or province they are in.
Yay.
Mom would say that that “Yay” is called sarcasm, because it does not really mean I am happy.
I like sarcasm. It hides how I really feel. And this is how I really feel. I do not like journals.
I know “not” should be spelled in lowercase letters, but I wrote it in all capitals because it is extra important.
I do not like writing journals because trying to think about what to write and how to write it is hard work. Sometimes my journal writing is like my pencil threw up on the paper because I write down whatever pops into my head just to fill up the page.
How many pages do you have to write to get a pass in your daily journal in Grade 3? Am I done yet?
I just looked at the rules on the board, and it says two pages.
Yay! That means I am done.
p.s. That last yay was not sarcasm. I really am happy.
p.p.s. I warned you—sometimes my pencil throws up on the page.
What I Did This Summer
What I did over the summer was this.
Over the summer, Mom and me moved from Toronto, Ontario, to Lower Bedeque, Prince Edward Island (PEI). Moving away from Toronto was no fun for five reasons:
I do not like change.
I had to leave my good friend Jane behind in Toronto.
It’s hard for me to make new friends because I do not like talking to people. When I do talk to people, I always worry I have said the wrong thing. So, thinking about having to make a new friend makes me want to cry all the time.
Guess what? If you are a crybaby, other kids do not want to talk to you, almost as much as you do not want to talk to them.
I also had to leave my dad behind because him and Mom are no longer the peanut butter to each other’s jelly. They are more like vinegar and milk. Everything turns sour when they are together.
Even though I do not like change, I think maybe I will like Lower Bedeque for five different reasons:
I like hearing the ocean and the seagulls outside my window in the morning.
We have a barn with four goats, ten chickens, Meanie—the rooster we inherited when we bought the house—and three horses.
Our new house used to be a bed and breakfast (“B&B”) and a restaurant. That means our kitchen is like a restaurant kitchen. It even has a soft-serve ice-cream machine. That is the most awesome thing because I love soft-serve ice cream and cooking with Mom.
Things move slower in PEI. I do not like rushing even more than I do not like writing in journals.
Best of all, I have my very own craft bunkie overlooking the ocean. I can go there to craft anytime I want to and I love crafting. Crafting makes me as calm as the bay when the morning air is still, and there’s a mist hanging over the water.
Back in Toronto, everyone was in a big hurry to go nowhere. That made my heart rush so fast. I could not catch up to it no matter how fast I ran.
When I cannot be crafting, sometimes running really fast in the same place helps stop that rushing feeling inside me. But then, I think it’s kind of like the hurrying-to-go-nowhere thing that all those people in Toronto do.
Thinking about going nowhere no matter how fast my legs go gives my heart that rushing feeling all over again.
What Animal Would I Be?
This is not a hard subject for me to write about. But at the same time, it is very hard. Because I worry that I am writing about things that I do not want the whole world to know. After, I will think about everything I wrote and worry that I shouldn’t have written it.
Anyway, back to what animal I would be. If I were an animal, I would be a mouse. I know this because in my old school, a boy whose name is Jaxon called me “Mouse” all the time. The reason for this was not a nice reason. Jaxon called me Mouse because he said I was too quiet and scared of everything, just like a mouse.
I am not scared of everything. I’m not scared of Meanie chasing me or riding big horses or cooking on a hot stove or using power tools and hot glue guns when I craft.
I am only scared of some things. Like speaking up in class. Or telling kids to stop calling me Mouse. Or going to tell a teacher that kids are being mean to me.
After Jaxon called me Mouse, the other kids started to call me Mouse too. Then I had a new nickname. And when the teachers were not listening, the kids would squeak at me. Hearing those squeaks made me cry sometimes, and that would make the mouse squeaking worse.
In this school, I do not want to be a scaredy mouse. Instead, I would like to be a lion. But I do not think I could ever be a lion. Lions raise their hands to answer questions when they know the answers. Lions take charge of situation
So, this means I will probably never be a lion. I will always be a little scaredy mouse. Too scared to speak up.
Thinking about all of this mouse stuff happening here makes me feel like I am stuck on a carousel ride. The ride is spinning too fast for me to get off. I am a sitting mouse in a big teacup, and the animal behind me must be a giant cat. I already feel like someone is ready to pounce on me.
Squeak.
My Favorite Place
My favorite place to be is in my craft bunkie. It used to be an extra room for the B&B our house once was, but now it’s a special place just for me.
Yesterday after school I went straight to my bunkie because I got an idea for a gift for my good friend Jane back in Toronto. I made us matching bangles with a quote from Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery stamped into them. That quote is, “True friends are always together in spirit.”
I thought that, because I am now in PEI, that quote would be a good one for Jane and me to have on our best-friend bangles.
Making bangles is sometimes hard because you have to make sure you line up the stamp just right before you bang it into the metal. When I make them for Mom’s store, they have to be perfect.
Luckily, Jane and I both know sometimes mistakes happen, because Jane has made them with me before. We are okay with the odd upside-down or missed letter in a word. She will understand what “True fiends are always together in spirit” means. When I messed up on hers, I made sure to make the exact same mistake on mine. That way we can be fiends together.
This is what makes us true friends.
Visiting Meemaw
On the weekend, we went to visit Meemaw, who is my dad’s grandmother. She lives in a whole other province, even though it’s only fifteen minutes over the bridge. In Toronto, the other provinces are hours and hours away. From here, we can visit three provinces in an hour. I think that’s kind of cool.
Meemaw is happy she can see us more, even though Dad is not here too. She thinks we moved here to be closer to her, but I know that is not the case. We moved here because Mom and me had too much of Toronto life.
Now sometimes we get too much of Meemaw.
Mom says less is best when it comes to Meemaw. She says this because Meemaw always tells us we are doing things the wrong way. So, when we are at her house, Meemaw watches us like a rooster watches an egg collector. One small move in the wrong direction, and we will get pecked.
I agree with Mom. Too much of Meemaw doesn’t sit well with me either. Meemaw always has too many questions for me to answer, which sometimes is not so bad, but she always answers them herself before I can.
“How do you like your new school, Izzy?”
“I’m sure you like it more than your other one.”
“Why don’t you have any friends yet?”
“You will make friends if you look at people when they are talking and speak up, so they can hear you.”
Meemaw’s blab, blab, blab and her cheek-pinching fingers make my emotions flip together more than Mom’s stir-fry in a pan. But Mom’s flying stir-fry flips always land back in the pan. My emotions sometimes splat on Meemaw’s floor.
Emotions all over Meemaw’s floor is one of those wrong things in the wrong way. Luckily, she only has one carpet and it’s by the door.
Seeing Meemaw was not the good part of my weekend. The good part of my weekend came when we got
home. Mom said we needed a special dinner after seeing Meemaw, so Mom and me made lobster fettuccine Alfredo. That is my absolute favorite food ever. And I love it when I get to cook with Mom in our new kitchen. We are the perfect duo—like Parmesan cheese and white sauce.
Next, we got the call that our new puppy is almost ready for us to pick up. And we got to go see him on Sunday. He’s what you call a “Morkie,” and he’s brown and black, and only a little bigger than my hands put together, even though he is already almost six months old. His name is Gandalf because he will be like my very own wizard.
Dr. Jones in Toronto says this dog will help make my anxiety be just a small part of me, instead of it being the thing that controls me. Anything that does that must be magical.
So, even though my weekend started out terrible, with a visit to Meemaw, it turned out to be the second-best weekend I will have ever. The first best will be when we bring Gandalf home.
Missing Reading Group
Yesterday was not a good day for me.
Before I even got out of bed, I was doing that worrying-too-much thing I do. That made my stomach ache and my head pound terribly.
I was worried about having to go into the reading group that we need to do now. I am not afraid to read, but I do NOT like reading in front of other people. Or being in groups with other kids. I can only handle one kid at a time.
I knew that if I said the wrong thing in my group, or nervous-laughed at the wrong time, the kids in my group would hate me.
Because of all the worrying, my body was stuck to the bed like a fly in a spiderweb. I felt like a fly too. I could not make myself get out of bed no matter how much I wanted to be lionlike. Instead, I was mouselike and covered my head with blankets. I did not even poke my head out when Mom called me down for breakfast. Even the smell of blueberry pancakes and sausages could not flip me out of bed.
Then Mom came up to my room and found me hiding. And then that made her mad because if I do not go to school, she cannot go to work.
If she cannot work, she cannot pay bills or buy stuff. Like food. Without food we cannot cook together and will starve to death. I do not want us to die. Then I would really be just like that stupid fly that got itself caught in the spiderweb.
And then, even though I know we probably would not really die of starvation anytime soon, thinking about dying made me worry more. So, even when I tried my very hardest to get out of bed, I could not move my legs or arms.
Next, I breathed so hard I could not catch my breath.
Then Mom had me breathe into a paper bag.
Watching the bag puff in, out, in, out made breathing easier because it put my mind on something other than reading groups and dying.
After all that trouble, I finally got out of bed. But by that time, the bus for school had already passed by our stop.
So, Mom and me stayed home anyway.
That is all.
Being Lionlike
Yesterday, I made myself go to my reading group. To do that, I took deep breaths and slowly let them out. When I could feel my face getting hot and my heart speeding, I said, “I can do this.”
Breathe in and out.
“I can do this.”
Breathe in and out.
“Reading is easy.”
Dr. Jones says as soon as I start to feel that stomach-clenching feeling, I need to slow down and count to ninety. She says my body knows I’m going to have anxiety before my brain does, and ninety seconds is all people need to stop panicking. After that, it’s all in your head. So, that’s what I did.
After ninety seconds of deep breathing, I took one last deep breath and walked to my reading group. Which was maybe more lionlike than mouselike, so I am happy about that.
Reading group wasn’t too hard at all because my reading group is only me and a girl who’s named Dianna Simon. Reading with one other person and the teacher is not so bad at all because it’s not really a group of people. And I did not accidentally nervous-laugh or anything when Dianna read the words wrong or said something wrong. And she did not laugh when I said the wrong words either.
After my reading group, Dianna picked me as a partner for a word game in the reading center. We took turns rolling the dice to color in our words by the numbers on the dice. And guess what? It was fun.
Now I know that Tuesday when I was stuck in my bed, I was really worried about nothing. I did a mouse thing and did not even look at the board with our reading groups on it. Because I was too scared to think about it. If
I looked, I would have seen only my name and Dianna’s name. If I saw that, I would not have been stuck in my bed at all.
A lion would have taken a step back for ninety seconds to slow down and look at all the details of the reading groups before getting all worked up.
