The one about approval.

 It seems as though the approval of other equivalent and persistently pessimistic humans puts our very morality at stake.
 If we were made to seek approval from others, we would die in spiral of unfathomable promises and decimated hopes. Like a cup of over-steeped tea, the bitterness could not be overshadowed by the honey of approval. Individuals who are, by all appearances, oblivious to the disappointment of the people around them put off a reckless air that they uphold with an outwardly invincible finesse. You know the type of people I've just described. They hold their heads proudly come hell or high water, and discipline, even of the most stringent sort, causes no apparent irreparable damage to them.

 I am never absolute on the best handling procedure for this type. I tend to ignore them until they drag my miffed expression into their tomfoolery. Now, these people, typically though not always male, vary in age. I'm reading the Harry Potter books to my younger brothers, and these young delinquents tend to blurt out spoilers such as "Snape's the half blood prince" and "Dumbledore dies" at no gain to themselves. Troublemakers like these who have only watched the movie and proceed to soil the experience for my brother make me twitch with indignation.

This year, summarized.

From this day one year ago to this day, I have grown and changed in many, many ways. I’ve experienced love,  and on the opposite end of the spectrum, heartbreak. I thought I knew so much before this year, and now I know that I know nothing. This year, continuously, I would feel as though I had it all together and the moment I felt collected, someone unceremoniously yanked the carpet of reality from under my feet and I fell flat on my face. This year has been a war of staying balanced on that rug that I never felt as though I could trust.

On April 16th, 2012, I lived in a house in New Oxford in a lovely, ignorant calm before the ensuing storm. Then we heard that there was a house we’d likely be moving into. I got excited because I like those kind of changes and I was ready to be in a much better location as it looked like this house would be. While my parents bravely endured the battle with the financing company, I was able to relax and focus on finals. Eventually, the company promised us that we could move in by the end of August and we listened to them. At the end of the month, we moved out of that house and went on a two-month homeless adventure. We switched from tents to yurts to cabins to friend’s houses to my grandparent’s houses. Eventually we talked to the owner of the house, signed papers on the hood of a truck in Hanover and moved in  that evening.

I can not present to you how I have grown this year without factoring death into the equation. I attended eight funerals this year, six of them family. The two that struck me the most, (if I was to pick two, because they were all really sad) were my Aunt Heather, who died suddenly after simply “not feeling well” and my Uncle Mark who committed suicide. Words don’t seem to be enough to say how that affected me this year.Especially the latter was the loss of a close friend that I never saw coming. Then, the rug of reality was brutally ripped from underneath me again.

But out of all this turmoil, this heartbreak, this fear and these tears comes a new chapter. I developed a relationship with his best friend, and I’ve stayed close to Amy, his fiance. I am surrounded by amazing people, and they showed me that I am, even when I’ve   emotionally lost my cool and mentally couldn’t remember what I had just read or heard. Some of my friends who took an interest in my emotional healing took me out and taught me to snowboard. Some people say that snowboarding is for punks, but I don’t think so. For me it’s more than a fun thing,it will always stand in my memory as a few hours when I couldn’t stop smiling in a time when I hadn’t truly smiled for weeks.

I love games. Pretty much all kinds of games. Sports, board games, mind games, card games etc. I love to read fiction even more. Sometimes I spend so much time reading fiction and playing games that I forget that school is important too. This year, I think AP and CC have helped me develop away from my game-playing obsession, though it never worked me out of my fiction reading fetish.

I was baptised on June 21st, 2011 and I’ve grown much closer to God since then. There was a phase when I questioned God, and was even mad at him, in the week when I attended two funerals. I learned that he was there, though. He had to drag me along my Christian walk sometimes to keep me going, but he was always there. I learned that trusting him is hard, but not impossible.

Last year tested my emotional capacity.

I lost much that was important to me. I learned that while I can not ignore my losses, I need to focus on the future. There are so many amazing things ahead, and likely terrifying things, but I will embrace them and add them to this crazy thing called life. I know myself better than I did one year ago, and I should not have written as much about myself if there were anyone whom I knew better. I am me, conveniently.

I’ll close with some song lyrics;
Everybody wants to slap your back, wants to shake your hand when you’re up on top of that mountain. But let one of those rocks give way, then you slide back down. Look up, and see who’s around then. When the water’s high, when the weather’s not so fair, when the well runs dry - who will be there? That’s when you find out who your friends are.

Mountains and moguls and snow - oh my!

Today is the last day of dear Ski Liberty. I feel the need to tell the story of just exactly how I, a horseback-riding, tea-drinking, wannabe-journalist black belt from a farm house came to snowboarding. Last year, winter 2011-12, I had these friends. They were quite simply pretty really totally awesome, and they invited me to come "snowboarding" - this thing of which I knew very little. I had been skiing a few times, and I had fun, but it wasn't "interesting". So they prodded a bit and I didn't come just because I just didn't feel like it. This year, winter 2012-13, they mentioned it again. I gave it little notice until I heard "discount". "Exactly how much does it cost?" I asked. They told me, and it was actually pretty do-able. After all, this is a one time thing, right? I went home and put the date on the calendar. It was the time during the school year where there doesn't seem to be much to look forward to, so I looked forward to going, I suppose.

 The first time I went, the weather was a lovely cloudy gray, and it was about 0 degrees Fahrenheit at the top of the mountain. We pulled in the vacant parking lot (being home-schooled I could go on a weekday :), and I saw a few punks walking into the lodge... I couldn't help but notice that they were all hoisting expensive, shiny snowboards. I wondered in passing what I had gotten myself into.

  So eventually we got outside of the lodge, snowboards in tow, and I watched as my friends who had taken me magically attached their boards to their feet and glided over the snow to the base of a lift. The youngest stayed behind for a moment. He looked at me and said "I think your lesson is in a minute or two. I'll be right back." I watched as both the group of friends departed for a lift to my far right, and the youngest of the group headed to one in the middle. They all got on the lifts, and were gone.

 "Hey, you're snowboarding?" asked a suave dude with a green coat, sunglasses and a bandanna. "Yeah." I said. "Okay, let's get started."
"OH COOL"  I thought. I grabbed my board and was planning on heading for the middle lift when the instructor turned towards the last place I thought I was going - the bunny slope. So my lesson continued. I managed, in the end, to get down without falling. That took a surprising amount of perseverance.

 Three months and many, many falls later, I was at the top of the mountain with my best friends. Maybe it was karate for a few years, maybe it was that I've known them since I was eight years old, maybe it was arisoft, maybe it was even snowboarding, but these people who at first drug me along made my "best friend" list, which is actually a pretty select list. Either way, I was at the top of the mountain. My friends were really REALLY patient with me, and I think if it wasn't for them I wouldn't have ever tried some of the slopes that I did this year. Yes, I did all of them besides the black diamonds. No, I haven't done moguls yet. Yes, I've gotten past the dorkiness of the helmet because it saved my life a few times.... or at least my skull. 

Pictures: Above; me and my friends, down (1) Dear sister and me (2) A photo I made. 

Moguls and mountains and lifts and lights, goggles and boards and snowball fights.

Daydreaming

I was studying pretty intently today, accomplishing a lot. My sister had previously been in my room and had way - I mean WAY - overdone it with the perfume. So I opened a window and shut off the heat. If you live where I do, it's about 60 degrees outside. That's really nice for the day before Easter. There I was, accomplishing things, when I realized that putting my desk next to the window was a really terrible design flaw. I ended up staring out the open window, a warm breeze tickling my face and a steady rush of perfume out the window. Also, I had finished a brutal water fight with my siblings (coughcough I lost coughcough) about an hour ago and dried, so I could smell the grass on me. It was just so warm and pleasant that I got to thinking, upon staring at the field outside my window, just how lovely it would be if I could have horses in that field. I began to wonder how much a barn would cost and how long it would take to build, I wondered what my parents would do if they had to take care of horses when I went to college, college doesn't have to be far away, does it? I wondered if I could take horses with me. I caught myself in the spiral of daydreaming. It was irritating that I had to break from it because I needed to study.

And that is the story of how my textbook got thrown out the window, kids.

5655 down, X number to go.

Interesting thought: I've only been on this earth for 5655 days.
That means I have approximately 22,995 days left.... not as long as I thought.

Hmm.... 23,000 sunrises.


Time to go do something important.

I have never met a slurry with worse manners; the sequel

 I thought I had met the most misbehaved slurry the other day. Today I realized that it really does have the worst manners imaginable.

 A dark, claustrophobic coffee shop was crowded. A line filled the place. It was a line of innocent people waiting for their caffeine. Upon seeing the extensive amount of people filling the place, my Hippie Aunt and I headed for the other side of the stores lining the road. It was a perfectly normal day, and the following story goes to show that a normal day can turn disastrous in a moment.

 As I strolled down the sidewalk, bouncing a fist-sized ball and passing absent-mindlessly the millions of shop windows and advertisements, I heard a noise. It wasn't just a noise, it was a crashing. Something was falling. Instinctively, I turned to see. All the while, thoughts rushed through my head, "What did I break? Do we have to take Aunt Jill to the hospital?". I turned just in time to see a sheet of ice plummeting from an awning onto my unsuspecting Aunt. The sheet shattered over her red hair like glass. It wasn't over yet. The ice was followed up .06 seconds later by a smattering of snow. Again, the slush was totally not socially acceptable. It could have thought "Oh, you look cold already, I'll just land a bit to the right." or "It will be most beneficial to the shoppers for me to land just seconds later.".

  I saw my Aunt double over, but she stood back up with her glasses in hand, laughing. Fortunately, minimal damage was done.
Yes, people were staring. I even saw one shopper's jaw drop. We successfully escaped that incident, and the shoppers returned to their shopping, exchanging murmurs and whispers among themselves. Though she did lose a hairpin.... as I said, minimal damage.

Now, for those of you who don't know my Aunt, she always elaborated that she wanted to die in a "freak accident". That's my aunt. All aversions to normality. She came up here from Alabama, expecting some nice white snow. Instead she almost experienced death by ice sheet.

I have never met a slurry with worse manners.

I braved the elements today, with all the mentality of avoiding procrastination. "Today," I told myself "I'll shovel the driveway without even taking time to double-layer socks. Then I'm sure to avoid procrastination." Only a minute later I was dressed and shoveling the thick clumps of the indignant, icy stuff off the pavement. I silently congratulated myself for not procrastinating on this arduous task. About fifteen minutes into the job, I was bent over my shovel, hauling the maximum amount of snow possible, back straining, eyes tearing from the blistering wind, mind focused, when everything changed.

 I heard a low rumbling, and looked up to see my soaking demise. Red, flashing, and screaming in a fury best described as "huge", a snow plow came around the corner. I was happier when my view of it was obstructed by the hill in the yard. Just in the split second that I looked up to see the brutal machine, I saw flying towards me a monumental pile of ice, slush and other unidentified gray matter from the road. In a splendid trajectory towards me, this pile had no plans of stopping or saying "I'll be considerate and land just to your right.". I have never met a slurry with worse manners. So I was to be found, continuing my task of snow removal from the driveway covered (from the fur-lined top of my hunter green parka to the tips of my black boots) in the previously described pile of snow, ice, and gray matter.

 Upon speculating the evidence of my task completed, a clear driveway, I dropped the shovel by the door. I strode into the gloomy garage undefeated. So you see, even though I was indignant towards that particularly rude spray of snow, the snow plow itself was no match for me.

Date a Girl Who Reads

There is story that I nearly fell in love with. Though I see that the world tends to bring dating and relationships into everything. If the story wasn't about "dating", I'd like it a lot more. Never the less; read on.

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.
Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.
She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.
Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.
It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.
She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.
Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.
Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

Stack o' Literature

Just a picture of books that I own and have to read.

I'm making my New Year's resolution right now.
"Read through this list of books"

Books on my e-reader that I don't have pictured here are:
Green Tea, Joseph Sheridan
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving
The Blithedale Romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Emma, Jane Austin
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austin
Story of My Life, Helen Keller



Thoughts on these titles?

Have a Very Geeky Christmas.....

Doctor Who is my favorite. "Party like it's 1705, 2015, 1991, 1942, 1233, 302BC, 1998."



( I hope Hank sees this xD )