So I had better write a monumental 400th entry to commemorate this occasion. I lay awake last night as images of me driving during my "manic panic driving lesson" moved back and forth in my head. I realized that my last entry was my 400th entry so I tried to relax my mind by thinking of something I could write. I decided to tell you a story, Diary, of a little girl I once knew very, very well.

She was born on March 30th 1987 to two kind and caring people who lived in Manchester, UK. Since she was their first child, the couple lived happily for six months in their little house in Manchester, but eventually felt like they needed to branch out. Planning for the future, the little family moved to Shropshire and settled in a little place called Madeley. A house was built for them in a new neighborhood that was just stepping on to its feet. Over the time they lived there the other houses around the little house they had bought grew up fast. Soon the neighborhood was well established. Other people who lived in the area also had little children. It seemed like the newcomers to the area wanted to come with their new families and settle in a new place.

The family of three lived happily for a time in their little, yet too big house. The house had many rooms still waiting to be occupied by other little people. So another child was born to the kind and caring parents. This time a little boy. There was something strange about the little boy though; he was born with six fingers on both hands and six toes on both feet. This was thought interesting by the parents, but not terrible since within a year the little extra fingers and toes had been removed, leaving a generally normal child. (Though he was a trifle annoying to his older sister.)

The family of four lived happily for a while. The father worked in a big computer company and the mother worked as a head secretary for offices down the road from the father. The little girl found her first memories and soon after her bother was born, she went to a child minder (daycare) after school. She made some friends there, but never ones she really liked a great deal.

Her best friend lived down the street from her. They met when they were around one year old in a group for mothers and their toddlers. The two girls became inseparable as they grew up, although originally they went to different schools. Time moved on and soon they were both in regular school, learning to read, write, and feel the effects of time as they moved up the years in the school.

One day the mother sat her daughter down and told her, you will have another little brother soon. Several months after that, the little girl was in her classroom at school when she was told that her new baby brother had been born....without extra fingers or toes.

So the family seemed complete and for a time it was. Life moved on, the children bickered and had sibling rivalries, though never seriously killed each other. Small, yet important, happenings occurred in the little girl's life. She lost her first tooth, she almost saw Santa Claus, the older of her two brothers broke his arm, and she had her little boyfriends as little girls and boys often do in an effort to mimic their elders. She got glasses, making the new and clearer place. Her group of friends grew steadily, though she and her one true best friend stayed close friends always. They did fight with each other very often, becoming like sisters to one another, but they always knew when to make-up and renew a game again.

The family went on trips to France many summers, to the Canary Islands one year when the nine year old girl got the flu and almost fell off a camel. (She always disliked camels after that) They visited relatives living in England, although she never felt close to any of them except her grandparents.

Her mother left her secretarial job when the youngest boy was born and became a child minder after a few years, determined to never leave her children with strangers to look after them, again. So the little girl helped with the children and, even though she was also very young, she learned to help out and play games with those younger than her.

The girl learned to play music, starting with the recorder then to the piano and finally to the trumpet. Her father was very involved with music so she would go to the concerts and wish she could play that well.

Life progressed onwards, slowly at times, but faster at others. Christmas's came and went, the summers brightened and faded away. The one fateful Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) her parents announced, we have to move. And they did move, but not to another bigger house in Shropshire, nor to a bigger house in the whole of England. They moved to a hotel room across the ocean to far away America.

It was strange land and the little girl, who was now not so little at an elderly 10 and 5/6ths. She didn't like the hotel room at all, but dreaded the day when she would have to leave it and make friends in a new and foreign school. Most days the family searched for houses to rent and live in. Though the father was also a little preoccupied with sorting out his work which was the reason the family had to move.

And so began the journey of a little English girl in a very big state called California.

There is more, but I really must stop writing now because my fingers are cramping up due to the cold seeping into my room. Perhaps I'll continue the story on my 500th entry, or maybe a little sooner...who knows? Let me know if you want to see how it ends, I'd like to know too.